Latest / All The Right Movies / The Thing (1982) | Ep. 10 - Part 1

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The Thing (1982) | Ep. 10 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

0:04
All the right movies. It's origin Alien location
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Antarctica. Age Unknown Intent Survival
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Destination man John Carpenter's The Thing The ultimate in alien
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terror. Rated R.
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John Carpenter's The Thing was released in 1982 and was a box
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office flop and took a critical morning.
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Since then, it's grown in stature to be regarded the
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modern classic, one of the great movie remakes, and helps cement
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Karma's position as the master of horror.
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My name is John and I'm here with Westie.
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I know you gentlemen have been through a lot when you find the
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time. I'd rather not spend the rest of
0:53
this winter tied to this fucking couch.
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And Matt, I said. Watch Clark.
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Couldn't lose, damn it. All the right move.
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We were talking Cartman, Russell and Morricone.
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Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what
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happens. Hello and welcome to all the
1:31
Right Movies, a shape shifting chariot of the pods on classic
1:36
and hit films You. Took that one out.
1:42
Today. Oh, that's the best bit.
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Really obscure. Today, and finally, we're
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talking about a film that came close quite a few times in our
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polls and at last managed to win one.
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We're waxing lyrical about the master of horror, Kurt Russell,
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and out there special effects to bring you the making of story
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behind John Carpenter's science fiction horror classic The
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Thing. Yep.
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Sure are being some time coming. This one, I think, hasn't it
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massively. It has, Yep.
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Before we get into it though, a quick mention as ever, of
2:12
Patreon. If you like what we do on our
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Yeah, sorry about 27,000 hours, but if you get that reference
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2:58
Back to the Antarctic now though, as Kurt Russell and Co
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are being hunted by a weird killer alien.
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So why do we want to talk about The Thing, Westie?
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Well, I mean, come on, this is so exciting.
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This is so exciting. There's so much in this film.
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It's so good in just how like confident it is and how
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accessible it is. And then how fucking terrifying
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it is, but how stupidly over the top it is.
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But at the same time, you don't question it really.
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You're just in there. You're in that world.
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There's so many. There's twelve different
3:32
characters and you know them all.
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It's one of them films that the ultimate film that you've had a
3:36
night out and you've got a kebab and you've still got a can in
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the fridge and you're like, I'm just going to have a kebab and I
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put the fucking thing on and you're just like, yes.
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Best night ever. It is the best night.
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It's probably better than the night out.
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Almost certainly. That's how good it is.
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I absolutely love it. I know Matt loves it.
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I know you love it, John. So I'm very excited to talk
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about it. There's lots and lots and lots
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to get into. Yeah, well, I came to this one
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pretty late, to be honest. I didn't see you as a teenager
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like a lot of people probably do.
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I was willing to be 20s when I first saw the thing.
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But science fiction action horror film, that's obviously
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right on my street. And I was a fan from the very
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first watch. I like John Carpenter.
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I think we all do. Yeah, And it's good to be
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talking about him again after covering Halloween a while ago.
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We've also got Kurt Russell in the lead, Ennio Morricone
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providing the score. So some big names to chat about
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and the special effects work on display here.
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All practically, obviously, it's 1982.
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It's just bonkers. It's absolutely crazy.
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So I can't wait to get into that.
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And there's theory after theory out there about just about every
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aspect of the thing. That final scene especially.
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I'm sure you've got a few of your sleeve as well, Westie.
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Yeah, I've got 97 so. I want to hear about all of that
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as well. All next I'm not doing all 97.
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Quite a lot to get through, but we should have a lot of fun
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doing it hopefully. Definitely.
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And Matt? Because I've just never showed
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up talking about it since my first view.
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And it's really haven't anyone. Anyone who knows me knows how
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important this film is for me. It did literally change
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everything. This film was like my gateway
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drug into cinema. I can still vivid.
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Yeah, it was because I can still vividly remember the first time
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I saw it. My parents had gone out.
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Me sister was in charge. She let me watch it and I just
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remember still lying in bed that night just thinking about, not
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even scared or freaked out, just thinking about what I'd seen.
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It had just blown my mind. You have a kebab.
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Sadly not, wouldn't let me have a kebab.
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Would you let you? What's your thing?
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Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, Priorities.
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Ridiculous, isn't it? But ever since then, I've been
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obsessed with this. If I went to friends houses,
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this is the film I'd bring along and make us watch it.
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If friends came over to my house, this is the film I'd make
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everyone watch. Like if didn't, if they hadn't
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seen it before, it's like, oh, you went for a treat.
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Yeah. Is that why you've only got 5
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friends and we're? Pretty much alienated everyone
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by making them watch this over and over again.
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It's a week from the chaff. Yeah, it does.
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Yeah, exactly. If you can't, you know, cope
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with that, you don't deserve to be me friend, quite frankly.
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But it's it's also the film I've won the most copies of.
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I taped it off the telly. I pestered me parents to get me
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on on VHS when DVDs came along. This was probably the first film
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I upgraded to. And then when I was 30, I was
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given a Blu-ray player for me present and I had a party and
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Westie bought me this on Blu-ray for me 30th birthday.
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I did. Yeah, Yeah.
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I. Was going to get you the
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laserdisc but I thought I'd take the piss.
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Can't play it, so it's fair to say this film is quite important
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to me. Yeah, great.
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So The Thing was produced by The Term in Foster Company,
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distributed by Universal and released on June the 25th, 1982.
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Filmed in LA, British Columbia and Alaska.
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It was directed by John Carpenter, written by Bill
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Lancaster and in the main cast, Kurt Russell, Wilfred Brimley,
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TK Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Daisar, Charles
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Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masu, Donald Moffitt, Joe Paulus
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and Thomas Waits. We're not going to talk about
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the cast in detail. Don't worry about.
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That you just have, yeah. That's it.
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So shall we get into the movie then?
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Just please. OK, up next, you've got to be
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fucking kidding. We're talking the beginning of
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the thing. Oh, first goddamn week of
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winter. The film opens with the iconic
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title appearing on screen in an out of control flying saucer
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crashing down to earth. Is it a good way to pull us in?
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I love Howard Sony in respect that you realize that this bit
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with the UFO is happening thousands upon thousands of
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years ago. Yeah, the opening title of Mimic
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those used in The Thing for Another World from 1951, the
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film this is a remake of the logo was placed behind the smoke
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filled fish tank covered with a plastic bag.
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The bag was unignited and that creates the effect of the title
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burning onto the screen, which looks fantastic.
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It's probably my favorite title that isn't yellow.
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Wow, hybrid. Yeah.
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But if that, if that was yellow and that had burned in, that'll
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be it. End of day is amazing.
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But yeah, it's fucking fantastic.
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After the iconic logo, title and career in flying saucer, we're
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right into it. Carbon.
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That sets the story going pretty quickly, and we've got a couple
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of big scenes to talk about in the beginning of the movie.
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The famously gruesome moment the thing reveals itself in a
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crammed dog kennel is up for discussion.
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But to start us off, we're looking at the first minute of
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the film where the dog in question comes into possession
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of the team of Antarctic scientists.
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Sounds good. Not for them.
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So we open in the bleak Antarctic waistline as a dog is
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being pursued and shot at by Norwegians in a helicopter.
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This scene brings us character in draws spoilers in Norwegian,
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shameless product placement for GMB Scotch and the smuggest
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computer chess grandmaster ever seen on film.
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Yeah, an intriguing way to start things off, I think.
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I think it's amazing because we are immediately confused because
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why are you shooting at this amazing dog?
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Like leave them alone. Every time I see it, I'm fucking
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furious. I'm like, leave them alone.
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And it's just such a great setup because they're just so focused
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on this one thing. But you get that Morricone
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score, you get that bum, bum, bum, bum.
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And it just you expect to kind of explode into something, but
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it's just this dog. And that dog honestly is
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perfect, Probably the best dog I've ever seen on screen.
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And it's it's persona, it's attitude, it's just absolutely
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perfect. Runs when it needs to.
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It's Scott was underneath the helicopter at one point.
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Like that's fucking ridiculous. And then when he finally lands
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and he's just screaming in the way you don't know what's
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happening, there's no subtitles, which again, I think is
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fantastic. But then Gary straight out of
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there and he's a great shot. Just one shot, boom, straight
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headshot revolver from a window in the kill.
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Shot love it. Yeah, absolutely kill shot.
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But I just think it's really, really great.
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The one thing I can't get over is how bad this guy is throwing
10:15
hand grenades. Is he like he's?
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Miserable. Is he Norman Wisdom straight
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away? Oh, shit, all the other stuff.
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And then that blows up, the helicopter blows up, but it's
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great because you'd like, you're thrown into it and you just
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think, well, there's so much confusion and there's so much
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that you're trying to grasp that you can't grasp because
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everything's just so outside of your thought process.
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Like why are they shooting at this dog?
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Why can't you throw a grenade properly?
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Why are they so scared? Why are they so confused?
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Why is he from Norway? What the fuck's going on?
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And you're just immediately in this Riddle and it's the
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paranoia and you dropped straight into the paranoia.
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I think it's fantastic. Yeah, I love Morricone, his
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heartbeat, score, the star as well.
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I mean, who doesn't? Absolutely brilliant.
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And that image of the dog being chased through the snow by a
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helicopter is a great way to start a movie.
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It's really memorable. And like you say, Wesley, it's
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confusing, has the intrigue about what's actually going on
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straight away from the first shots.
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I think my favorite thing about this whole intro, though, is the
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confrontation between the American scientists and the
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Norwegian scientists who've been chasing the dog, which ends in
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Gary. Like you say, Wesley shooting
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the Norwegian scientists dead. What I like about this is that
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the Norwegian scientist is shouting at the Americans in
11:22
Norwegian, but obviously they can't understand him.
11:24
If you know you're Norwegian, though, he basically lays out
11:27
the entire film for you. So in Norwegian he says get the
11:31
hell out of there. That's not a dog, it's some sort
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of thing. It's imitating a dog.
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It isn't real. Get away, you idiots.
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And that's when they shoot him. Right.
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Right. So that's pretty cool.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's a really good
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intro with the score, the memorable opening shots and
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cotton that sets up This is a mystery, which has the audience
11:48
and certainly me in trees right from the start.
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Unless you speak Norwegian, then you know what's going to.
11:54
Happen. So I bombed in Norway in the
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first 7 minutes. All right.
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Thanks. See you later.
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Then. All right.
11:59
Cheers. Yeah, it's a thing, is it?
12:00
No worries. It's excellent and it's the the
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bleakness of it that I love. I've always had a real liking
12:06
for any film that that set in some kind of Arctic setting.
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I just find it really evocative and it just automatically gives
12:13
it so much atmosphere. And I'm pretty sure this is
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obviously where that started because it's just the the Shia
12:18
desolation of that landscape and those walking shots.
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There's no escape in it. It just stretches on forever.
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There's no horizon. You just you just can't get away
12:26
from it. And then combine that with that
12:27
Paulson heartbeat music over the top of that YouTube both
12:30
mentioned and it's just so good. And yet like you guy says it,
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it's the questions this film's thrown up.
12:36
You know, why are they chasing the dog?
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Why they're trying to kill it? What's it got to do with the UFO
12:40
after scene? You know, yeah.
12:42
How, how is this going to come together?
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It's so fascinating how they do. That the amazing thing about the
12:46
landscape as well is that it's probably the biggest landscape
12:49
you could shoot but still feel claustrophobic.
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Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
12:53
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:54
Well, that's the old film, isn't it?
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You know, in some ways it's wide open, but you you just still
12:58
can't get away from it. Yeah, I think it's a fantastic
13:00
open. And I just love that little
13:02
twitch though when Benin's gets shot and he just uses Arsenal
13:04
opportunity. Sort of like Neck and Mccready's
13:06
whiskey. So it seems that we like what we
13:10
got here as an opening, but it could have been quite a lot
13:12
different as the script changed drastically.
13:14
Have you heard how it opened originally?
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No. No.
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So I think you might like this, Westie.
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The idea originally was that the helicopter pilot would lose
13:23
control. The helicopter would spin
13:25
uncontrollably and then disappear behind the mountain
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and we'd hear a big explosion. Then the lone survivor of the
13:30
crash would appear from behind the mountain on fire and chase
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the dog into the American camp. And calm that scrapped the whole
13:36
thing because he thought it was, in his words, cliche after
13:39
cliche. I mean, it does sound way over
13:41
the top. But I know you love a flaming
13:43
and drove him a film Westie, so I thought it might be.
13:45
All off on that. I thought you'd be like, the
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survivor comes over the top of the mountain and it's Indiana
13:52
Jones with the dog in a whip doing that.
14:00
Anything. I'll have anything on fire.
14:01
It was big fun. So not a huge action inroad of
14:06
the thing, especially after that initial start was changed, but a
14:09
good setup of the main characters and I think it gives
14:12
us a pretty intriguing premise. Absolutely.
14:14
Absolutely. Yeah.
14:16
From there, and after discovering a bloodbath of the
14:19
Norwegian camp, things take a turn for the worse for the team.
14:22
After the dogs put into a kennel crown with other canines, all
14:26
hell breaks loose. Basically, in this scene we see
14:29
maybe the greatest dog actor in history, McCready, bust out the
14:34
flamethrower for the first but certainly not the last time, and
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outrageous visual effects as the thing reveals itself.
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Yeah, yeah. Absolute modern is this, isn't
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it? It's.
14:44
Ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
14:48
Yeah, I mean, Carpenter here in the scene, he breaks one of the
14:50
great unwritten rules of cinema, which is you never kill the dog
14:54
unless you want to make people cry.
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And he really kills the dog. And not just one, one of them,
15:00
you know, he kills a fair few. He's just not holding back.
15:03
Straight away. You think, OK, right, this is
15:04
what this film is going to be like.
15:05
There's going to be nothing. So about this film, you just
15:08
straight in there because you know, there's something quite
15:11
right about this dog from those early scenes that we're just
15:13
prowling around and this is absolutely delivers when you
15:16
find out exactly what it is. But you also can't quite get a
15:20
handle on it either, which I love.
15:21
You know, it does sort of looking like a dog, but then
15:23
it's got tentacles and then it's got these like massive claws and
15:27
then it's just like a big massive writhing flesh with an
15:30
eye and then that bit that shoots out towards child that
15:33
looks almost plant like. So you just watch this thing.
15:36
What the fuck am I actually looking at?
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I think it's incredible and there's just loads little
15:41
details that linger for me. They want to think about this
15:43
scene, like the howling of the wind outside before the dog
15:46
turns and it ends on such an ominous N with all those
15:50
characters just staring at that smoke and ruin of what's left of
15:53
it and trying to work out what the hell it is.
15:55
But I do always struggle because this thing just makes me think,
15:58
you know what? For this like isolated Antarctic
16:00
base, they've got a hell of a lot of weapons there, like loads
16:03
of rifles and all those lying around.
16:05
That dog, he's the best actor in the film.
16:07
That dog, spooky as hell. The way he's just staring when
16:12
he first goes into the kennel, I love it.
16:14
And realized the dog was actually called Jed and Carbon.
16:17
I said most of Jed's scenes took three or four takes, which is
16:20
less than all of the actors. I'm not surprised.
16:24
But as good as Jed is, when I think of this sequence, it's all
16:27
about that transformation for me.
16:29
It's gruesome, it's weird. I've not seen anything else
16:32
quite like it. It's outrageous in the best
16:34
possible way. The way the other dogs all start
16:36
barking at the thing before it does anything is great.
16:38
Set it up. I love how two of the dogs just
16:40
scarp out the door the first chance to get like, fuck this,
16:43
I'm out of here. Yeah, just.
16:44
And when and when the things dog head just suddenly splits open
16:48
from Norway, it's fantastic. Cotton has got one of the
16:51
greatest Morricone from musical support here, but he barely uses
16:54
them. There's almost no music in the
16:56
scene because Cotton knows it doesn't need it.
16:58
The visuals, nobody's forgetting nose in a hurry, so he leans on
17:01
that instead of the score, and it all just works superbly.
17:05
It's maybe not the best or the most suspenseful scene in the
17:07
film, but I think it might have the most memorable imagery in
17:10
the whole film. In this one, yeah.
17:12
Yeah, I see loads of influence from this scene.
17:14
I don't think I'd seen much like it before, but just the the
17:18
confidence with the special effects work, just that it is
17:21
all practical. And I think everyone just looked
17:22
at it and thought, you know what?
17:23
This looks fucking amazing. Like there's no part of this so
17:26
we can't shoot. And when that dog's head splits
17:29
open and you reveal that thing beneath it.
17:33
And I'm always confused about this film, and then this is the
17:35
main thing that I'm going to bring up, is that what is the
17:38
thing? No one actually.
17:39
Is it just a cell that floats around and lands on something?
17:41
Is it just a tiny, tiny little thing?
17:43
Yeah. I think the crush in the ice was
17:45
that an alien that the thing had infected and then it died and
17:48
it's now part of its cell build up.
17:50
It doesn't really explain indeed how it works, is it?
17:53
No, not at all. But so this is like, well, why
17:55
is that dog actually splitting and then becoming more dogs?
17:58
Why don't you just be that dog and just be all right, like, oh,
18:01
this will be fine, I'll fuck off eventually.
18:03
Yeah. The other dogs were kind of
18:05
hostile towards it, so I can see why it splits off and starts
18:08
attacking them then. OK, but he could have just gone
18:10
in with a little less of an attitude and he would have been.
18:15
They'll just slink in there, fucking start snarling.
18:18
Is everything all right? No, just go in the corner and
18:20
chill out and then this might not have happened.
18:22
Plunks itself right in the middle of the kennel, doesn't
18:24
it? Yeah, right down, right.
18:25
I'm part of this and it's severe and everything, but you're just
18:28
on edge with it. I think the sound design is
18:30
incredible. I think the way this is shot is
18:33
really, really good. I think Dean County really pulls
18:35
it out. The bag here, it's all lit by
18:37
torch light. Reminds me of seven in some
18:38
instances, maybe it sounds to the Lambs and some instances
18:41
what I'm gonna try and do is break the record for the word
18:45
Disgusting. Said it.
18:47
In the Texas Chainsaw episode. So I'm gonna try and break it
18:50
here but this is fucking disgusting it.
18:52
Is it just? Everything you don't want to
18:55
see, it's a spider like form. It's got spraying out some kind
18:58
of like jet of water, some fluid.
19:01
I don't want to see fluid. I don't want to see spider like
19:03
things. I don't want to see like little
19:04
fucking things slipping across the ground.
19:07
It's like when you tip over the seafood section of Morrison's or
19:10
something and it just. Spills on the.
19:11
Floor and you pour blood in it that's.
19:13
Fucking disgusting what you're going.
19:14
To do that often, dear. Yeah, never again.
19:18
Squirt all over. So we've all mentioned the
19:21
extraordinary effects work that we're seeing this scene.
19:23
I mean, how can you not? And the special effects
19:26
supervisor on the film was Rob Boutine, but he actually didn't
19:29
have all that much to do with this particular sequence.
19:31
It was, though, overseen by another special effects giant,
19:35
someone we're talking about quite a lot.
19:36
Do you know who that was? Big Stan Winston.
19:38
Yeah, Stan. It was Stan Winston.
19:41
So Rob Boutine just came from working on The Howling, a
19:44
werewolf horror movie, and he said if I have to do another
19:47
stinking mechanical dog, I'll go nuts.
19:50
I didn't care if it was mutated. I didn't care if it was riding a
19:52
skateboard. No more dogs.
19:57
The skateboard in there. Getting chased by the helicopter
20:02
on a skateboard. Start about the future.
20:08
I would love playing over the top.
20:10
Well, that'll improve anything. So a Bo teen contacted Stan
20:14
Winston and he and his team came on board to help out.
20:17
For this sequence, the dog was basically a puppet that one of
20:20
Winston's guys operated, and the moments where the tentacles
20:22
shoot out of the thing and wrap around the other dog was done
20:24
with reverse photography. So it was shot where the
20:26
puppeteer would pull the tentacles back into the thing.
20:29
Then this would reverse for the film.
20:30
So it looks like they're shooting out, especially at the
20:33
moment that the dog's head opens up.
20:34
I think we all mentioned it. It's like a flower, but every
20:37
pedal is a dog's tongue and they're surrounded by rows of
20:40
dog's teeth. Absolutely disgusting to use
20:43
your word, Westie. Yeah, but a brilliant what a
20:46
what a level of focus to like that attention to detail is like
20:49
it's all made from a dog's tongue and it's dog's.
20:51
Teeth. Yeah, that dog thought.
20:52
One thing that I do love about it, you have that team that's
20:55
just trotting down the corridor and of course of someone's room.
20:58
You see that silhouette turn around because someone's in the
21:00
room that looks at it, and then it just fades to black, which I
21:03
think is an amazing edit. I love it, and that's obviously
21:07
how that person becomes infected.
21:08
And it's one of the great mysteries of the film because we
21:10
don't know who it is. It's either going to be Norris
21:12
or Palmer, and it does look like it could be either one of them.
21:14
So it's got curly hair, but add to the mystery carp and actually
21:17
use an extra for the shadow to sit in that room and create that
21:20
silhouette. So it's a mystery in the film
21:22
that can never be answered because it's an extra in there.
21:25
Oh, right, I'm glad you told me that because every time I watch
21:27
the thing I'm like, who is that? I want to say it.
21:30
No, but you know who it actually is?
21:32
It's Dick Warlock who was the stunt coordinator on the film,
21:35
and he actually played Michael Myers in Halloween too.
21:38
Wow. Yeah, so if you're one of the
21:40
who's the 1st infected, it's Dick Warlock from Halloween.
21:44
There's also a really good story about the sound design in the
21:46
kennel scene, which I mentioned earlier.
21:48
So in order to get the sound of the dogs bargain frantically,
21:51
the sound designer, a guy called Colin what, rounded up loads of
21:56
stray dogs and put them in his house.
21:59
Imagine that for a star. Then he dressed in a trench coat
22:03
and then walked around the outside of the house, just
22:05
tapping on the window just to piss them off.
22:10
Why your trench coat and then go outside?
22:14
Yeah, why the trench coat? Just the dogs are going to be
22:16
like shit, who's at the trench coat?
22:20
Let's go to the top. Half with a pipe and.
22:22
Just be like hello. What do you mean isn't?
22:27
It what's he doing all those dogs Far as strange as that
22:30
story, is it really fucking? Worked.
22:32
It did work. To be fair, yeah.
22:36
So it's a relatively slow start in some ways in the Thing Cotton
22:40
that sets up the mystery without opening and then ramps up the
22:42
intrigue of the Norwegian camp before releasing the tension in
22:45
an explosion of blood, dog tongues and fire.
22:49
This is where the paranoia starts, right?
22:52
Don't trust anyone. I'm all very tired.
22:57
The director. The director of John Cotton as
23:02
The thing is, unsurprisingly, John Cotner.
23:06
He already built quite the name for himself by this point by
23:08
directing low budget cult classics like Assault on
23:11
Precinct 13, The Fog and Escape from New York and one of the
23:15
most influential horror films ever in Halloween.
23:19
The Thing was a big step up though, in terms of both
23:21
expectations and production budget, wasn't it?
23:23
It was. Yeah, massively.
23:25
Yeah, we nearly didn't get them, though, because the producers,
23:27
they did want them. That's Lawrence Terman and David
23:30
Foster, but Universal one of Toby Hoopin said.
23:33
Because he was under contract to them already.
23:35
And obviously off the back of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which
23:38
does make sense to be fair. And Hooper did get as far,
23:41
submitting 2 drafts to the screenplay.
23:43
But Universal didn't like either of them.
23:45
So they let Terman and Foster go back to Carpenter for the first
23:48
choice, and that's how he ended up with a gig.
23:50
Yeah, I've read about Toby Hooper's version, and it would
23:52
have been very different from what we got from Carpenter.
23:55
Have you heard about that? No.
23:57
Is it even more disgusting? No it's not.
24:00
It's less disgusting. Which I'm not really.
24:03
Well, firstly, the Alien Hooper's version did not shape
24:06
shift or simulate hosts, it just ate them.
24:09
So that alone, straight away, it's completely different.
24:12
Yeah, that's. Morrison.
24:16
The main character was called the Captain and the film was
24:19
about his obsessive mission to find and kill the thing, which
24:22
that one's very Captain Ahab. Moby Dick to me.
24:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Internally, get this, Hooba
24:29
wanted his film to be a horror comedy with loads of slapstick
24:32
humour, right? Slapstick.
24:35
Yeah, I've not read those drafts, but apparently there was
24:38
a scene in there where a character gets caught by the
24:40
thing after literally slipping up on a banana skin.
24:44
Oh, that's. Amazing.
24:46
Does he eat the banana skin as well?
24:48
Assimilated. Yeah, I ate the banana first.
24:51
Left the skin out there. I love you.
24:53
And Lawrence Turman, the producer who might mention
24:55
there, said it would have been one of the worst movies ever
24:59
made. Yeah, that doesn't sound great.
25:02
No. So disaster averted.
25:04
Toby Hooper was out and John Corbin that was in.
25:07
With that said, how Do I like Cotton does work as the director
25:10
of The Thing? I think Cotton is absolutely
25:13
perfect for this and the level of his career that he's in.
25:16
I think he's confident enough to give it a little bit of space,
25:19
give it ambiguity, give it a little bit of, you know, a, a
25:22
slower pace to everything that he's done.
25:23
I mean, it's good for New York. It's like 1000 miles an hour.
25:26
Salt in Precinct 13, it's 1000 miles an hour.
25:28
Even Halloween for it's for it's slow burn.
25:30
It's still quite a fast-paced film.
25:32
This is just it, it gives the audience that space and that
25:35
time and he gets to explore a lot more characters than he has
25:39
done before. And I think it shows how good of
25:41
a director he is working with actors and giving them their
25:43
space to do what they need to do and what he does so well.
25:47
And what really pisses me off is that he opens this film up to
25:50
about 1000 different theories, and he's fine with that.
25:53
He's just fine with it. He's like, you know, that's all
25:56
right, That's cool. Even the matte paintings are
25:58
massive and huge, but he never makes it feel huge.
26:01
He makes it feel like, you know, this is in your front room and
26:04
it's right with you all the time.
26:06
And I think that's why it was such a success.
26:08
Later, I think when people got on VHS or people got it and they
26:11
watched it in the house, I just felt like I can't escape this.
26:13
And Carlton that does that. So he does the claustrophobia so
26:16
well. You see it in Halloween, you see
26:17
it in Precinct 13, and he can do it with a plum and he absolutely
26:21
nails it here. I think it's probably one of his
26:23
best films. Yeah, I think all of us know the
26:26
right movies like John Carlton. That's a varying degrees.
26:29
I like Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13.
26:32
And with the massive impact Halloween made on horror, you
26:34
can still see it's influence loud and clear today.
26:36
I think in cinema, I think it's really easy to make a case for
26:39
Halloween being his best film, certainly the most important.
26:42
But Carpenter himself says The thing is his favorite film of
26:45
his and I agree with him. I mean, if it's good enough for
26:48
JC, it's definitely good enough for me.
26:51
This is the one where, like most classic films, but maybe for the
26:54
first time for Carpenter, he has loads of talent that he can
26:57
direct and lean on. He's got a strong cast and he
27:00
gets performances from them. One of Kurt Russell's best
27:02
performances for me. He brings in Rob Bortin to
27:04
supervise the visual effects, and he did an astonishing job
27:07
that we'll talk about more. He gets one of the great
27:09
composers he mentioned there, Westie Ennio Morricone.
27:12
He comes up with some fantastic music.
27:14
And what's impressive is a Cotton that's working with all
27:16
these big talents. But the thing still feels like a
27:18
Cotton that film. It's still got the distinct
27:21
visual flair his best stuff tends to have.
27:24
We'll talk about that more when we discuss the DP, Dean Cundy.
27:26
But the way the camera moves and certain shots in the film, it
27:29
feels to me like it's definitely made by the same guy who did
27:31
Halloween when I watch it. Yeah.
27:32
Yeah. The criticism I have is that
27:35
this is Cotton that's first time working with a decent sized
27:37
budget on a film like this. With a big budget, there's going
27:40
to be action and it needs to be impressive and spectacular when
27:43
it comes. And I think compared to the
27:45
other big action director names, Carbon that is found sometimes a
27:49
bit wondering here. For me, I think the big action
27:51
sequence comes right at the end where McCreary takes on the
27:53
thing in a one-on-one fight. It's basically the same sequence
27:56
or the same idea as the end of Aliens where Ripley fights the
27:59
Alien Queen. But the difference in quality
28:01
between them, it's just massive. I Am Jim shows Carbon to how
28:04
it's done for me. He is known as the master of
28:07
action. No Carpenter, he's known as the
28:08
master of horror and all that stuff.
28:10
The tension building, the palpable paranoia you can feel,
28:12
the horrific moment when the thing attacks people.
28:14
All fantastic, all orchestrated by Carpenter.
28:17
So in all he did a brilliant job on the whole for me.
28:20
Yeah, it's work here. It feels like he's horned and
28:23
he's refined his craft to the best he can possibly be from
28:27
everything he's done before. So it's like he takes that
28:29
incredible camera work from Halloween, but Halloween is
28:32
occasionally slackly pier. This isn't This is pierced
28:35
perfectly or it's like the fog, which I like a lot, but it's got
28:38
a few cheesy moments in there. It's got a few cheesy
28:41
jumpscares. This hasn't none of that.
28:43
Nothing. He feels cheap or cliched.
28:45
And in terms of tension, it's like Carpenter from the very
28:48
first frame. He's got his hands like around
28:50
the throat of the audience and he just doesn't let go.
28:53
And his control of that tension is just exceptional.
28:57
And as well as creating all that, I think like some of his
28:59
visual composition here is so effective.
29:02
Like one of the touches that I really love is how low down he
29:04
has a lot of these shots. So the sea is always in view.
29:08
And that made that contributes to the claustrophobia of the
29:10
film because there's no way out. You've got these long corridors
29:14
that stretch way Into Darkness, and then you've got the ceiling
29:16
Hemming you in as well. So you literally cannot escape
29:19
from this film. And then corridors are all
29:21
cluttered and there's barrels everywhere and there's not a
29:24
straight line out anyway, is there?
29:25
No, there's not. And you have no idea where any
29:27
of them lead to either. There's no sense of saying, all
29:29
right, if you go down there, you're going to be OK, you'll
29:31
get out. It gives you no sense of that.
29:33
And it's almost subliminal how he does it.
29:35
And I love how he varies his camera work.
29:37
He was well because he either has a prowl in those corridors
29:40
like the dog does, or he sets it down and it just looks at the
29:43
characters. Because for all the insanity
29:45
that's going on in this film, his direction is actually very
29:48
patient. Intent is very patient at times,
29:51
and that's what gives the film that paranoia, the feeling that
29:54
something is watching you because the camera is doing
29:56
exactly that. And I think that all feeds into
29:59
this unnerving atmosphere that the film has, that the whole
30:02
film is soaked in. And bearing all that in mind,
30:05
it's no wonder that when this film flopped, like, critically
30:07
and commercially, that it just knocked his confidence.
30:09
Because Can you imagine him looking at, like, the final edit
30:12
of this and thinking, holy shit, I've nailed this from beginning
30:16
to end. This is absolutely the best
30:17
thing I've ever done. And then everyone just turns
30:19
around and says, well, oh, shit, What?
30:21
What, did you waste your time? I thought that was absolutely
30:23
terrible. You know, it's so it's no wonder
30:25
he lost his confidence because he put so much into it.
30:27
Nothing for me. This is just career best stuff
30:30
from him. I think it's absolutely
30:32
exceptional as work here. Yeah, yeah.
30:34
I mean, we've talked about their carp and they're getting
30:35
performances from the cast, and he does have a reputation,
30:38
unlike some directors, for being pretty easygoing on set, which
30:41
is nice. There's a story from The Thing I
30:44
like that illustrates that, where Richard Mazur, David
30:47
Clennon and Thomas Waits, who played Clark Palmer and Windows,
30:51
had an idea about doing a scene where Palmer and Windows would
30:54
conspire against the other scientists didn't like the idea
30:58
at all, so said no, and the three actors went into another
31:01
room and began cursing Carpenter.
31:05
The mics were still on, but he could hear them, so Clement said
31:10
John was great about it. He came in and said, I hear what
31:12
you guys said, and my reasons for not wanting to do the scene
31:15
still stand. You're right though, I am a
31:17
prick. He does usually come across
31:22
really well. Then he was in commentaries.
31:25
Yeah. Yeah.
31:26
Unsurprisingly, since the film was so derided on its release,
31:28
John Carbon Now received no big award recognition for The Thing.
31:32
I'm not sure I can think of another film whose reputation
31:34
has grown quite so dramatically over time, though.
31:37
Nowadays, The thing is regarded as a science fiction and horror
31:39
classic and right up there among Carbon does best work.
31:43
Yeah. Definitely good.
31:48
Path. The cast of The Thing has an
31:52
ensemble feel. Young, inexperienced actors, a
31:55
few wise old heads in there, and one bona fide movie star.
31:59
The Castle is too big to cover them all in detail,
32:01
unfortunately. So we're going to talk about
32:03
some of our favourites. And firstly, we're talking in
32:05
detail about that movie star Kurt Russell as what turns out
32:08
to be the main character McCready.
32:12
All right, so Kurt Russell is RJ McCready starting out as a
32:16
whiskey swirling battle losing computer chess helicopter pilot.
32:19
He slowly takes control of the situation when the thing
32:22
strikes, ending up defeating it supposedly in a one-on-one fight
32:26
at the end of the film. He doesn't trust anybody and
32:29
he's very tired. How do we like McCready and Kurt
32:33
Russell playing him? Matt?
32:36
I absolutely love this performance.
32:37
I think it's fantastic. And I think it's obvious that
32:39
Carpenter grew up watching actors like John Wayne and Gary
32:43
Cooper, Charles Bronson, all those guys who were like the
32:45
strong but silent types, you know, the type of actors that
32:48
didn't need reams of dialogue to get across how tough they are.
32:51
And I think Russell absolutely belongs to that lineage of
32:54
actors. Nothing.
32:55
That's why Carpenter went to him again and again because of the
32:58
just so on the same wavelength. But what I find interesting
33:01
about McCready, though, he's just not your typical macho, not
33:04
your typical macho 80s hero. He doesn't really do quips.
33:08
He doesn't do one liners. He's a misanthropic alcoholic
33:11
who doesn't trust anyone and he doesn't actually want to save
33:14
anyone else. Like if he can not suborn us,
33:17
but all he really cares about is saving himself and making sure
33:20
he destroys the thing and not even necessarily in that order.
33:23
And I mean, Russell just has that order to him.
33:25
He has that, like inner intensity that he can just bring
33:29
out, and he does does that, and he brings out all of Mccreede
33:31
flaws and attributes, like when he says he's going to shoot
33:34
Childs if Childs continues to challenge him.
33:36
Yeah, actually, you're completely beef.
33:38
He will do that to get what he needs to do.
33:41
And I think the Creed in general, he's a very, very
33:43
damaged guy. And that makes it all more kind
33:46
of darkly funny that he's our hero in this.
33:49
And Russell, I just find him perfect casting for that because
33:51
he's really brave as an actor. He embraces all the darkness, he
33:54
embraces all the edges. He doesn't try to dilute it for
33:57
one second. And there's a real sense that he
33:59
doesn't give a shit how unlikeable and the creed he is
34:01
because he's just got that sheer commanding presence that means
34:04
he's going to follow him anywhere.
34:05
I think it's a fantastic performance.
34:07
Yeah, I said earlier on this episode that I think this is one
34:10
of Kira Russell's best performances, and I still think
34:12
that 10 minutes later. I think if at the time you've
34:16
said to somebody watching this film that one of the cast were
34:18
going to be an A list movie star, it's only going to be one
34:21
person and a Wilfred Brimley Russell, the cast member who
34:25
brings movie star quality to the film from top to bottom.
34:29
Firstly, he looks cool as hell. That hair, that beard, those
34:35
Sonny's, that jacket. Wonderful stuff.
34:38
Absolutely wonderful. I know the Russell went quite
34:40
method. It took him a year to grow that
34:42
hair and beard. It was worth every minute of
34:45
that year because, yeah, well, spendable.
34:46
Absolutely. I don't think he's a great actor
34:50
necessarily Kurt Russell, but he's a very good actor and
34:52
always brings charisma and a likable alpha male persona that
34:56
he does better than most, I think.
34:57
And that's pretty much what we get from him here.
34:59
He did add some other soap. He did add some other small
35:01
elements to the character that I find interesting as well.
35:04
He would take a drag on a cigarette just before John
35:06
Carbon that show in action in certain scenes to make his
35:08
breath more visible in the Antarctic conditions And the
35:11
scene where Mccreadian Copper go to visit the Norwegian camp when
35:14
the helicopter took off, the pilot turned the controls over
35:17
the Russell for a little bit. And if you watch in the film,
35:19
you can see the helicopter wobble a little bit when Russell
35:21
takes the controls. So overall, I wouldn't
35:25
necessarily call it a great acting performance from Russell,
35:27
maybe, but it's not that kind of role as a lead in a science
35:30
fiction horror film bringing that star quality that the film
35:33
needs. He's just perfect, isn't he?
35:34
Greedy? And he looks fucking great,
35:37
yeah. Yeah, that was good.
35:39
That was going to be my line. It's like, does his hair ever
35:41
look better than this? So.
35:44
Fucking brilliant. He is he just like, you know,
35:48
he's flawed from the first time you see him.
35:50
And there's that one computer is built just to make, to play
35:53
chess, just to make that game accessible and he fucks it up
35:58
straight away. So I've had enough of this bitch
36:01
and you're like, okay, fair enough.
36:03
He's put nice into his glass and you'll say okay, right.
36:05
But this guys flawed and but he's the pilot, so he's got to
36:08
be in tune with what's going on. But you follow him 100%.
36:12
And the great thing about his performance is that you saw
36:14
behind that you never, ever, ever questioned the fact that he
36:17
might be the thing. You always kind of go.
36:20
Now someone stitched him up. Now he's too down the line.
36:22
He's he's too much of like the guide that I would support 100%.
36:26
You know, Matt wants a flamethrower.
36:27
Get the fucking flamethrower. Then Matt wants it.
36:29
There's no questioning behind it.
36:31
He's just saying what, what, what for?
36:32
Like, no idea, but they're coming with it.
36:34
All right. Fucking blow that guy.
36:35
OK. And I would, I would like easily
36:38
if I was in the Antarctic, I would want that guy, as flawed
36:41
as he is, to be telling us what to do.
36:44
Yeah. Because he's just crazy.
36:46
So I'll absolutely love him in this.
36:47
I love him in in a lot of things.
36:49
I think that the work that he's done with Carpenter, I think
36:52
Carpenter really brings out this confidence in Russell.
36:55
I think Snake Pliskin is just an incredible character.
36:58
I think Jack Burton is an incredible character and I think
37:01
McCready is an incredible character.
37:02
And I think them just them three films is enough.
37:06
But he's went on, he's done other things and he knows now
37:08
now to take a back seat. And I think the stuff he's done
37:10
with Quentin Tarantino especially, like Death Proof and
37:13
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I think he's fantastic playing
37:16
himself in that kind of role and that tongue in cheek kind of
37:19
role. And Brussels, always great,
37:21
especially love them in Vanilla Sky.
37:23
And I don't think people talk about a film enough or that
37:25
performance enough. And I think he's absolutely
37:27
wonderful in that. But in this, yeah, 100%.
37:30
I mean the amount of times I tried to grow me here and be at
37:32
exactly the same. I mean, we've talked about hair
37:36
and beards on this podcast quite a lot.
37:38
Surely this is the pinnacle, isn't it?
37:39
It's it. That's God being asked me.
37:42
All downhill for me for beards. Well, as much as we like him in
37:46
the film, Kurt Whistle wasn't quite a list at this point when
37:49
he made the thing, so he wasn't issuing for the role of McCready
37:52
and other people were considered some big names as well.
37:55
Have you heard any of them? I've heard Jeff Bridges was in
37:58
the frame at one point. Yeah, well before that when Bill
38:01
Lancaster wrote the script, he was actually thinking of
38:03
Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood playing McCready.
38:07
I mean, they had no chance of getting either, really.
38:09
But I think it's quite easy to imagine early 80s Harrison Ford
38:12
as MC ready to be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.
38:14
Yeah, I can see where he's going.
38:15
Like Empire Strikes Back at these.
38:16
Yeah, big furry hood. They're fucking nice again.
38:22
Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges, like you say, Mark, they both
38:25
turned the role down. Carbon I met with and considered
38:28
Kevin Kline, but the studio felt he didn't have enough star
38:30
power. And Alec Baldwin also
38:33
auditioned. He'd been too young.
38:34
I think he'd only been about 2223, I think at the time.
38:38
So after all of those names, Cotton, that turned to his pal
38:41
Kurt Russell. These were together a year early
38:44
on, an escape from New York. And also in Cotton, that's TV
38:46
movie about Elvis, where Russell definitely was the star power
38:50
the studio wanted. So they were easily convinced to
38:53
get him in as McCready. So with all that said, what's
38:56
your favorite McCready moment in the film?
38:59
Well, I'm going to go with this very first scene, actually,
39:01
because I think it's one of the best character introductions
39:03
I've ever seen. And for a start, and this is
39:05
something else that you only realize after like, a few
39:08
viewings, Mccreed is the only character who has his own place.
39:12
Like, everyone else is living in that compound.
39:15
Some of the guys are enough to share rooms together.
39:17
Yeah. McCready is just like, no, fuck
39:19
you guys, I want to be around you all as little as possible.
39:22
And secondly, this scene that just tells you all you need to
39:25
know about him. And it also tells you what the
39:27
end of the film is going to be. I mean, firstly, I think it's
39:30
interesting that he's not playing Pong on this computer
39:32
anything. He's playing chess who's, you
39:34
know, he's an intelligent guy and he can think tactically.
39:37
But when he loses, rather than emit defeat, he will happily
39:40
just destroy that game like this one possession that's been
39:43
keeping him sane, apart from whiskey, obviously.
39:46
And you know, he just up ends the board basically and burns
39:49
all the pieces rather than loose to it.
39:51
And that's why he does at the end the film when he knows The
39:54
thing is one, he doesn't do what the Norwegians do.
39:56
He doesn't put a gun in his mouth and just take the easy way
39:59
out. He just goes, you know, if I'm
40:00
going down, I'm taking that thing down with me.
40:03
And he does. He obviously literally burns the
40:04
place to the ground rather than loose or I think.
40:07
You say that, doesn't it? You just say like, we're not
40:09
gonna, we're not getting out of here alive.
40:11
Neither is that thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:13
Exactly in that same routine. I think it's just a lovely bit
40:16
of foreshadowing you get here, and it's a great introduction to
40:18
maybe 90 seconds, maybe 2 minutes of screen time.
40:21
Think it's pretty outstanding. Yeah, that computer.
40:24
By the way, the chess computer is voiced by Adrianne Barbour,
40:27
who was John Carlton's wife at the time.
40:30
My favorite recruiting moment is when I actually go back to the
40:32
Norwegian camp. And then you realise, like, how
40:35
badass he is. He's like, he's fine to go to
40:38
different rooms by himself. He's like, I'll just check this
40:41
out. Yeah, no worries.
40:42
What the fuck's that? Is that some kind of human
40:44
thing? Is that whatever, Get it
40:45
outside, we'll burn it, right? I'll do the other rooms myself.
40:48
It's just like, and I just love that we've got the introduction
40:52
of the character that Matt said, but I think this is just more
40:54
fleshed out of his actual kind of outlook on things and like
40:58
nothing fears him. You straight in with them.
41:00
You want to follow in places and when he goes into the rooms in
41:04
the horror films, you don't want to follow anyone in the room.
41:07
But in this film, you want to follow McGrady in a room
41:09
because, you know, they can handle himself.
41:11
Yeah. And then when you see that, that
41:13
block of ice with the hole in it where something's escaped and
41:16
he's just kind of like, there's just that silence between the
41:19
two of them. Yeah.
41:20
And it that that seemed it must be like, what, like 45 seconds
41:23
to a minute where he walks in. There's just nothing.
41:25
They're just looking. And they're looking at each
41:27
other. And it's so powerful.
41:29
It's so well played. I think that is.
41:31
Then you go. Right.
41:32
I don't know who Mccrady is. I want to follow.
41:34
No problem. He's seen some shit like, hasn't
41:36
he? You can tell that.
41:37
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, it's great when they get
41:39
there and they've got like axes smashed into doors and blood on
41:42
the floor and that guy who just slit his own throat sitting in
41:45
the chair. Yeah, and then the blood's
41:47
frozen as well, coming out. Badass.
41:49
That was like, that's really cool.
41:52
That's disgusting. Yeah, it is disgusting, but.
41:54
Brilliant. We don't really get the details
41:57
in the film, but there was a back story written from a creedy
41:59
that would kind of see at times on the screen.
42:01
Do you want to hear what his back story was?
42:04
Yes I do. Is it Vietnam?
42:06
I hope it is of. Course it is.
42:10
So the idea is that Mccreaty is a former Vietnam helicopter
42:13
pilot. He was involved in some sort of
42:16
tragedy during the war and felt ashamed and disgraced by
42:18
whatever happened. And because of this, Mccreed,
42:20
you suffer from PTSD, he's an alcoholic and a severe insomnia.
42:24
It's not specifically mentioned in the film, but explains the
42:27
swigging whiskey from the bottle, why he's not fazed by
42:29
the over the top violence. And add some substance to the
42:32
lines, like I'm a real light sleeper child and stuff like
42:35
that. Yeah, I get that from Palmer as
42:37
well. I think he's there because he's
42:38
pilot, but he's got all that kind of play.
42:40
He's got the US Navy, he's got the US Army patches on, he's got
42:43
that enemy smoking all the Dubes like you've got like, yeah, he's
42:47
definitely a Vietnam fucking pilot.
42:49
Mccreedy, I think they might have been in the same kind of
42:52
regiment or something. He's just brought them along
42:53
just to give them a little bit of a break.
42:55
So that's why Mccreedy offers to fly all the time over this, over
42:57
Parma. Yeah, yeah.
42:59
Well, there was no award recognition for Kurt Russell for
43:01
The Thing, but as we mentioned, he did go on to big things
43:03
afterwards and became a household name movie star.
43:06
Some of those films big from the Little China, another common,
43:09
the film Overboard, Tango and Cash Backdraft, Tombstone,
43:12
Stargate, The Hateful 8, there's lots of others.
43:16
And to finish it off on Kurt Russell on The Thing, I've got a
43:18
nice quote from John Carpenter. So JC said.
43:23
Of all the actors I've worked with, it's always been Kurt.
43:26
He gets what I want like no other actor, which is why I
43:28
wanted him for The Thing. He had great ideas and we had
43:31
such a fun time doing it. Kurt is Kurt, and more than
43:35
that, he's my pal. Look at that.
43:38
Actually, do you know what my favorite scene from Mccrady is
43:41
when you first see him in the helicopter with that Yosemite
43:43
Sam hat on. It's a massive, massive great.
43:47
Stick. How the fuck has he pulled that
43:50
off? Yeah, yeah.
43:51
Put anyone in that you're an absolute loser.
43:54
Put Kurt Russell in that you're a superstar.
43:56
Unbelievable. You're right.
43:57
I've never even realized how ludicrous that hat is, but it is
44:00
totally ridiculous. I imagine it's because he
44:01
totally pulled it off. With that little hoodie
44:04
underneath and like fate on, and then that hat and he's totally
44:08
serious, right? I'm going back up.
44:09
Fuck it, OK, whatever. Brilliant.
44:12
Yeah, I mentioned earlier there's a big cast in the thing.
44:15
We don't have time to discuss them all, unfortunately.
44:17
And the rectors are certainly worth a mention, though.
44:19
So aside from Kurt Russell and McCready, he was your other
44:22
favorite in there? I'd say Palmer for me.
44:26
I love Palmer because he's just really, he reminds me like
44:30
Murdoch from the A-Team, like the helicopter pilot, he's got
44:34
the denim and he's obviously like he's left and he's right
44:37
and he's all over the place. But it taps into theory number
44:41
one. He would go oh.
44:42
He would go. Get in right?
44:45
Palmer fucked the blood up. He was sitting there, he got the
44:48
keys. He fucked that up.
44:50
Because the great thing about it is when you see them all arguing
44:53
about it and then when Windows runs away, Palmer's constantly
44:56
just got his earphones in. He's totally zoned out of the
44:59
whole conversation, doesn't mention anything.
45:02
Watch it again, like, why is he got his earphones in?
45:04
Why is he not bothered? And you see windows, he drops
45:07
the keys because he's been told to get them from Gary, drops the
45:10
keys. And then you don't see Palmer.
45:12
And I think he's just this real red Heron in the whole film.
45:16
And he's really like engaging when you see him talking, he's
45:18
got all these things to say and nobody considers what he says.
45:21
He's thrown out the window straight away.
45:23
He's our. Thanks for thinking about it,
45:24
though. I'll take them up.
45:26
No, you can't do it. He's like, OK, so automatically
45:28
he's backseat and then as an audience you put him backseat.
45:33
But if you watch it again, he's responsible for a lot of the
45:36
issues that happen going forward.
45:38
There's all these kind of different twists and different
45:40
turns and what's happening here and where is he?
45:42
Because he's just so engaged, but at the same time so
45:45
ignorable. He kind of just blends in.
45:48
So I think as a character, it's perfectly played.
45:50
It's really, really good. But I just think he's just a
45:52
great character who just sits right underneath everybody else.
45:56
But at the same time, he's really memorable but
45:58
forgettable. And I don't really think I can I
46:01
can think of another character in any of the film who has
46:03
impacted us in that way. He feels like Rumsfeld out the
46:06
burbs, but a younger version. Totally, totally.
46:10
If he. Got out of there.
46:11
He'd just be just like whatever, but just he's got that like kind
46:14
of vet, he's got that. It's almost stereotypical, but
46:18
you can completely buy it. And I love his performance, like
46:20
his grip. Yeah, he's taken by David
46:22
Clannon, isn't he? I think when you watch the film
46:25
you don't really notice him that much.
46:26
He writes, but then afterwards he's really memorable when you
46:28
think back to it, which I guess is testament to how well they
46:31
handle the character throw the story.
46:32
He's like me, isn't he? He's just, he's sat there and
46:34
he's like, Oh well, they talk the ink.
46:36
That's everything. They know the Starlight flies.
46:39
What the fuck you talking? About Marty, Was your favorite
46:45
of the character in there? I'm going for Windows, actually.
46:48
I've got a lot of sympathy for. Does he look like him?
46:56
You Dick, you've stolen me, Punchline.
46:58
Right. He stole my life.
47:02
But yeah, I completely empathize, empathize with the
47:04
guy because he's the radio operator.
47:06
It's his job to make contact with someone else out there and
47:09
try to get information or get help.
47:11
And obviously he just can't, you know, nothing's going right for
47:14
him. He's having like a really,
47:15
really bad day. So you can just really feel that
47:17
frustration that he's got. And I do like how he's one of
47:21
the few characters that really does trust McCready throughout
47:24
the film. You know, he's not somebody
47:26
whoever like goes against him. He's always like trying to argue
47:28
for letting him back in or, you know, saying he's OK.
47:31
So like that about him. And the thing, out of all the
47:34
characters that get killed in this film, he's the only one I
47:36
feel a bit sorry for. Like when when Palmer Trump's
47:40
him because like because he fucks up with the flame Thor and
47:44
he's just horrified by what's going on with Palmer.
47:46
And then the fact that he does like trust McCready, but then
47:50
McCready just, you know, without thinking, just burns him alive
47:53
just like no hint of remorse or like like that just boom
47:57
straight out of there. It's.
47:59
A hell of a death and he's just swung around the whole room.
48:02
It's like Jesus. And that's that scream.
48:06
And when he's just in the corridor and he's just kind of
48:08
like kicking his legs and he's just got like all over him in
48:12
the corner. Of the room.
48:13
Mccrea's awful. Yeah.
48:14
OK, Yeah. Yeah, just burning my life.
48:17
But more than that, we've all been through lockdown, you know,
48:20
until recently we've all had to go without haircuts.
48:23
As much as I'd like to say my lockdown hair was like McCready,
48:27
it was lovely and lustrous. To be honest, for the past year
48:30
I've really, really looked like Windows.
48:34
On the radio, trying to get in touch with anybody.
48:36
I don't think anyone's spoken on this continent and you want me
48:40
to fucking get in touch with somebody?
48:41
A. 1000 miles from nowhere. Man, Yeah, He's called Windows
48:45
because he wears those glasses all the time.
48:47
I know there was actually the actor Thomas G Wade, who came up
48:49
with that name. He showed up during rehearsals
48:52
wearing the glasses and said, I want everyone to call me Windows
48:56
from now on. And calm, they just went, yeah,
48:58
All right, then did they change the name?
49:00
So that's how famous a big cast in the thing then.
49:04
We can't go through all them in detail, which is a shame, but I
49:07
think they all play their part well and the three we've
49:09
mentioned there, Kurt Russell's McCready, Thomas G Waiters,
49:12
Windows and David Clan and his Palmer are particularly
49:15
memorable I think. Yeah, all brilliant.
49:20
The middle. The second act of The thing is
49:25
where the paranoia really kicks in.
49:27
But by this time the scientists know there's a killer alien on
49:30
the loose, and we've got a couple of big moments featuring
49:32
the Thing itself to talk about the famous and bonkers
49:36
defibrillator scenes coming up. But before that, we're talking
49:39
about the first time we see the Thing strike and take a person.
49:44
So after performing an autopsy on the malformed humanoid
49:46
creature found at the Norwegian camp, the scientists leave in
49:49
the storage room with Bennings for company.
49:52
It doesn't work out well. The creature isn't dead and it
49:54
attacks and assimilates Bennings.
49:57
Pretty gruesome, isn't it? Oh, it's nasty.
50:00
Disgusting. This sequence, right, there's an
50:05
amazing detail in this and and Wesley kind of alluded to it
50:08
earlier and it's really quite easy to miss and to be honest,
50:11
it was only fairly recently I picked up on it and it's.
50:14
Great. I'm excited about this.
50:15
Well, it's the fact that when Windows leaves Benning's lawn,
50:17
he says he's going to get the keys from Gary to help lock up,
50:20
right? Windows comes back, he obviously
50:22
sees that Bennings has been grabbed.
50:24
And if you listen, you can hear Windows drop the keys on the
50:27
floor because he's in complete shock, right?
50:29
And that then feeds into the latest scene, which we've talked
50:32
about, where the men are arguing around the fridge about who
50:34
broke in and who destroyed all the blood bags, because you need
50:37
the keys to open it. And that's how someone got the
50:39
keys because Windows has dropped them here.
50:42
And you don't need to hear that for that scene to make sense
50:44
because it's more about who did it rather than how.
50:47
But if you pick up on that on those keys, dropping it just
50:50
adds another layer to it. And it also adds another layer
50:52
as to Windows reaction in that scene later on.
50:55
Because he's singing fuck, this is my fault.
50:57
You know, I dropped the keys, someone got them.
50:59
This is straight. For the shotgun, isn't he?
51:01
Yeah, straight for the shotgun because it just like, you know,
51:04
the stress, he's already under it.
51:06
That's like the straw that breaks the camel's back for him,
51:08
because this is on him. Lovely.
51:10
Yeah, so I love that. That's arguably, even though you
51:13
see the thing here, that might just be my favorite bit about
51:16
it. Just a little detail because
51:18
it's quite easy to miss, but once you pick up and it just
51:20
changes the rest of the film. Nothing gets past humor.
51:23
Well, I mean. Unless it's like the 1st 40
51:25
times I watched or whatever. Oh, the keys don't make sense.
51:30
But then As for what's happening to Bennings, it's just another
51:33
what the fuck moment. And I think it's fantastic how
51:35
the thing never reveals itself the same way more than once.
51:38
It already looks different to what it did when it came out of
51:41
the dog. And I think Carpenter just holds
51:43
this shot perfectly, just long enough so you can see something
51:47
like really fucked up what's happening to Bennings.
51:50
Like is he being skinned alive? Is he being eaten?
51:52
Is he coming out of like a cocoon or something?
51:54
But then he cuts away so you don't get like a chance to take
51:58
it fully in. And I think it's really nasty.
52:01
But then when you consider that, like earlier on, Benin's has got
52:04
superstition by Stevie Wonder crap, he kind of deserves what
52:08
he. Gets Absolutely.
52:11
The thing's a big fan of that one, clearly.
52:13
Yeah. Yeah.
52:15
Well, Calm is known as an expert in horror, and he's certainly
52:17
flexing those muscles here in this scene, that shot where we
52:20
see the thick blood dripping off the table to signify the thing's
52:23
still alive. That's classic stuff.
52:25
And Calm does it perfectly as you probably expect him to.
52:28
And the shot where Windows walks in and we see Bennings in the
52:30
corner being absorbed, horrible that disgusting.
52:34
And when the corner the Benning is thin and it lets out the high
52:38
pitched scream, That's the stuff and nightmares that I know.
52:41
The idea is that Scream is a combination of every life form
52:43
that things ever assimilated, which is why it's so weird.
52:46
Wallache as well. And this doesn't just apply to
52:48
this scene, but the film is obviously set in Antarctica but
52:51
was filmed in LA mostly and British Columbia.
52:54
So in order to create the illusion of below freezing
52:56
conditions, the sets and the stages were refrigerated down to
52:59
4°C when it was about 40° outside.
53:02
So the shots from we can see act as breaths is actually real.
53:06
Except maybe Curtis Lou might have had a drag on a cigarette
53:08
on a Lucky Strike or something. And of course, so the setting of
53:12
say 100° and yeah, like sitting in the park is.
53:18
Either location, Russell still the coolest man there, no matter
53:21
what's going on. Easy.
53:23
And of course, the moment the corner of the Bennings thing and
53:25
we see is not yet transformed hands, that's just horrifying.
53:29
It's quite a simple sequence really, but you can see carbon
53:32
all over it, which is why I like it.
53:34
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think it's it's just one of
53:36
them real kind of like, all right, Jesus Christ.
53:39
I just, I wouldn't just drop the keys, I'd drop me ass.
53:49
No good. I won't be able to warn anyone
53:50
of anything. I'll be scribbling around like
53:53
in everywhere. It's ridiculous and it is
53:56
disgusting. I'd love to.
53:58
I love Blair's kind of research before this scene and it goes
54:02
in. You see that computer and it's
54:03
just so primal. Now you watch it because it's 82
54:07
and you go dog, sell bom bom bom.
54:11
It is done and say thanks for that junk off.
54:13
There's no need to hold it for 20 fucking minutes.
54:16
I get it like with it and then chance of someone might be
54:20
infected 75%. But I love when they look
54:22
through the window and you see Benin's running and you know
54:24
he's not ready. He's know he's not fully formed
54:26
yet, and he kneels down just right in that spotlight without
54:30
any dialogue, makes exactly the same decision.
54:33
Like, he's got to go. Yeah, without anyone saying
54:35
anything. And you as an audience member,
54:37
you kind of go, yeah, he's got to go.
54:39
As soon as it turns out, he's like, his arms are fucked.
54:42
You're like. Please.
54:44
Take, take that out, whatever it is, but you're on the same page.
54:47
I think this is where company just goes, right?
54:49
You're in there with these guys now.
54:50
Deal with it. Yeah, I think it's fantastic.
54:52
Another interesting thing about this sequence is that it wasn't
54:55
originally in the script, so initially Bennings would just
54:58
vanish. So we would assume that the
54:59
thing got him at some point and it was the editor, a guy called
55:02
Todd Ramsey, who was the reason it was added into the film.
55:05
So to make sure he understood the film well enough to edit it,
55:08
Carpenter asked Ramsey to explain the pathology of the
55:10
thing to him, and Ramsey did, but he got it wrong.
55:13
So Carpenter added in this Benning scene to make it clear
55:15
how the thing absorbs a life form and replicates it.
55:18
Basically. I'm still not entirely sure how
55:20
clear it is, but that's why this is.
55:21
Put it in there. It's, it's not clear at all, but
55:24
you know, there's the genius. This film, like it doesn't
55:27
really matter. It's just something you know,
55:28
because you don't understand it, because it doesn't lay the
55:31
foundation down. It makes it even scarier that
55:33
the film doesn't understand itself.
55:35
It's almost like something it's like a true story about
55:38
something that nobody understands yet.
55:39
Yeah, it does work. It's.
55:41
Terrifying, but it really works. Yeah, to an important scene
55:45
there where Benning has taken. We see the thing attack a human
55:47
for the first time. And the scene wasn't in there
55:50
originally, but I think it's a pretty integral addition.
55:52
Yep, disgusting. From there, paranoia is
55:58
everywhere. After the other scientists
56:00
suspect McCready of being the Thing, McCready holds him up
56:03
with dynamite, resulting in Nora's having a heart attack and
56:05
caught. By getting the defibrillators
56:07
out, we see the Thing in all its glory and some outrageous and
56:11
inspired special effects work. One scene never forgotten.
56:15
This defibrillator scene I think.
56:17
But amazing always. Just if I'm watching it at home,
56:23
I'm thinking right, like if whoever's going to come home,
56:26
like come home now, right now while I'm watching this, what
56:30
the fuck are you watching? I've watched The Thing with
56:33
people before who've never seen the Thing and every time I'm
56:36
thinking I can't wait for deliver.
56:38
Like a moment to come here it is right.
56:41
Boom. And it's just when he's like,
56:42
guys, I need a hand here and he's like, no, you're going to
56:44
need two in a minute. Like it's so good.
56:48
I don't know, Rob Button, like the the special effects guys
56:51
like made that that guy's an amputee and like his arms were
56:56
gone. So they made them out with
56:58
jello. So he made his arms out of jello
57:00
and had all of the blood spurred out of it.
57:02
And then they made like a perfect cast of the guy's face,
57:06
the doc's face and put it over this guy.
57:08
And then that was a real hydraulic like machine on the
57:11
stomach. They crushed the arms and they
57:14
smashed the jello in and all the blood spurts out all over the
57:16
place. But I don't really think anyone
57:18
knew how good it was going to look.
57:21
And there's there's so many things in this scene like when
57:24
the head slips off backwards and like kind of disappears, but
57:26
there's just that pan that Dean Cundy does.
57:28
He just, it's that perfect. Like, well, sorry, it's a tilt.
57:31
It's just like from the top, the bottom, but the timing of that
57:33
tilt is exactly the same as the head sliding down again.
57:37
That's so fucking good to judge that and get it that exact.
57:40
It's literally like 2-3 seconds. But I watched that and I go,
57:43
that is fucking perfect. But the first time they did
57:45
this, I don't know if you know it, but like Rob Button had all
57:49
of these bits coming out of the throat like from when his head
57:52
was discharged and that was back off the table.
57:55
And it was all like plastic and bubble gum just to make it look
57:58
really like veins. And he said, well, we started
58:01
like shooting it and going actually, we need some
58:02
continuity. We need some flames in here.
58:05
So a guy had like a fire of a fire stick, it was called, had
58:08
little holes punched in it and you can hold it and if it puts
58:10
flames out in the bottom of the frame.
58:12
But because they were like didn't have a clue what they
58:16
were doing. It just looked great.
58:17
They didn't really realise the materials they were using and
58:20
they were all giving off these like toxic fumes, like flammable
58:23
fumes. And they were like, OK, this is
58:26
a one shot deal. We've got this face made here.
58:27
We'll go. The heads going back right Light
58:29
the fire. They lit the fire and they said
58:30
the whole set just went up. Like everybody said.
58:34
Everybody sat there like in a Looney Tunes garden with like
58:37
black faces. What does so set fire to it,
58:41
it's gone and say, well, we didn't get the take and come and
58:44
I was like, do it again. He said it's going to take us
58:45
half a day to redo this. He said you're going to have to
58:47
do it again. So the very first shot of that
58:49
because of everything that they put into it was completely
58:52
ridiculous. But that's because like, and
58:54
that's why I love this scene because it's so outrageous.
58:57
One of these bits, one of these clips would make sense, but
59:00
there's about four or five scenes in a year ago.
59:03
This is fucking stupidly good pick the ceiling bites windows
59:07
heads off. He's got absorbing them.
59:09
He's cut the fucking arms off and stomachs closed, his heads
59:13
coming off and turn into a spider.
59:14
What the fuck? Is this like 10 minutes long or
59:16
what? Amazing.
59:19
Fucking brilliant. Yeah, I mean, you've got to be
59:22
fucking kidding of the only words that fit.
59:24
And this is my favorite moment in the film.
59:26
It's the bit I always look out for.
59:27
The moment Copper's arms are bitten off is awful, but it
59:31
always makes me laugh, like a really dark laugh because it's
59:34
so ludicrous. I.
59:36
Mean. Intentionally so.
59:38
So the practical effect work here from Rob 14 and his team is
59:41
just off the charts. The chest, mouth and then the
59:43
spider head come back-to-back and it's some sight still to
59:47
this day. Back in 1982.
59:48
That must have just been insane seeing that for the first time.
59:52
Also I think the influence of Alien on The thing is pretty
59:54
obvious, and never more so than in this particular scene.
59:57
Pretty clear comparison to the chest burst sequence I think.
1:00:00
It's like a reverse idea, isn't it?
1:00:02
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
1:00:03
Yeah. And this isn't as iconic as that
1:00:05
scene in the Alien, obviously, but I like it just as much.
1:00:08
Absolutely love it. Well, it's disgusting obviously,
1:00:11
isn't it? I mean, I mean, you're just
1:00:17
sitting there watching this thing and you know what?
1:00:18
I've seen some fucked up shit so far, but that doesn't prepare
1:00:21
for what's coming now. But what's so clever is how
1:00:24
Carpenter gets you into this scene because he's distracting
1:00:27
you with the characters and what's going on between them.
1:00:30
Because just before this, you've got that argument about whether
1:00:33
or not to let McCready back inside or leave him outside if
1:00:36
he's to death. But he breaks in any way and
1:00:38
he's got the dynamite and he's going to blow everyone up.
1:00:40
And then Clark steals the scalpel and he's hit another
1:00:42
way, so you know he's going to go from.
1:00:44
And then Norris has the heart attack.
1:00:45
So it's just all going off all these different characters that
1:00:48
do like things that you're just trying to keep track of and it's
1:00:51
all just building up to something.
1:00:53
And you've kind of forgotten in a way, like about this actual
1:00:56
threat that they should be united against.
1:00:58
And they're just too busy squabbling and plotting against
1:01:00
each other. And you get distracted by that.
1:01:02
So then that's why it's so shocking when Carp and it just
1:01:05
thought he straight into it because it just keeps building.
1:01:08
You know, Norris's chest caves in enormous teeth, bites
1:01:11
coppers, arms officer, he's out of there.
1:01:13
And then Norris's head stretching off, sprouts limps,
1:01:16
becomes a spider, scuttles off. It should be ludicr.
1:01:20
Well. It.
1:01:24
Is down to the screenplay. Yes, exactly.
1:01:29
But here's the thing, like I think another director would
1:01:31
have probably lost their nerve about how how far the scene
1:01:34
goes. And we're like, no, no, that's
1:01:36
far too much pull back. We're not coping that he's just
1:01:39
so fearless about it. He's like, no, no, keep going
1:01:41
more, more, give me more. Let's push this as far as we can
1:01:44
and see what we end up with. And you just unleash yourself
1:01:47
and the way that it all just builds, like one incident after
1:01:50
another, you're watching this just like fuck, fuck, fuck,
1:01:53
can't believe what I'm seeing. So it's absolutely insane what
1:01:58
we're seeing. But I do think that build up to
1:02:00
it is just as good and just as clever.
1:02:02
It's an incredible scene. I absolutely love it.
1:02:07
So suspense and mistrust undercut every moment.
1:02:10
By this time in the film, crew members are going thick and
1:02:12
fast, the tension levels are rising off the charts, and Robbo
1:02:15
teams in danger of running away with the entire film.
1:02:18
A couple of pretty great sequences we're talking about
1:02:20
there, I think. Oh yeah, great.
1:02:22
You've got to be fucking kidding.
1:02:33
The thing is, John Carlton has film, of course, but a film like
1:02:36
this always need a talented team to pull off the various aspects
1:02:39
of this, and JC definitely had that.
1:02:42
We're talking in detail about the composer Ennio Morricone,
1:02:44
the director of photography Dean Cundy, and special effects
1:02:47
supervisor Rob Bortin. But as we'd like to, we're
1:02:50
starting with the writing of the movie.
1:02:54
So the screenplay for The Thing was written by Bill Lancaster,
1:02:57
son of Burt Lancaster, the huge Hollywood star of the 50s.
1:03:00
And at this point, Bill had two screen writing credits, the Bad
1:03:03
News Bears and the Bad News Bears go to Japan.
1:03:10
Well, the first one. 'S back when it came to writing
1:03:15
The Thing, Lancaster had two sources to use as inspiration,
1:03:18
didn't he? The B movie The Thing from
1:03:20
Another World from 1951 we mentioned earlier, and also the
1:03:23
novel on which both movies are based.
1:03:25
That's Who Goes There in 1938, novella written by John W
1:03:29
Campbell Junior. So how good or bad do we think
1:03:33
the writing is on The Thing? I think it's really, really
1:03:35
good. I think because this film is so
1:03:37
famous for its effects and what Carpenter brings to it, I think
1:03:41
the writing gets overlooked a lot.
1:03:43
Actually. I think it's a shame because I
1:03:44
think Lancaster does bring a lot.
1:03:46
So I think firstly how they get the idea of that creature on
1:03:50
from the page on the screen. So it makes sense.
1:03:52
And I love how, and we've kind of touched on this, how it's not
1:03:55
over explained. There's still lots of unanswered
1:03:58
questions about exactly what it is they've been fighting by the
1:04:00
end of the film. And that to me adds to how
1:04:03
terrifying it is. So how much contact do you
1:04:06
actually need to transfer the cells of the thing?
1:04:08
And does that mean it can take you over more slowly because
1:04:11
you've got that scene where Blair is talking about, like,
1:04:14
the dog thing, and he's touching it with his pencil to illustrate
1:04:16
a point, but then he's putting that pencil to his lips.
1:04:19
Is that enough? Yeah.
1:04:20
And there's the opening as well, like with with the dog, like
1:04:24
licking it. Bennett Yeah, trying to lick the
1:04:27
face and then it calms down once at the region shot.
1:04:29
So there's a lot of stuff. There's lots of stuff like that,
1:04:32
and I also think it's really strong with the characters
1:04:34
because you've got 12 guys here all roughly around about the
1:04:37
same age. Lot of them have similar jobs,
1:04:39
some of them even look fairly similar, but they've all got
1:04:41
very different in unique personalities that come out
1:04:44
really clearly and really quickly.
1:04:46
And I think more importantly than that, you get a sense of
1:04:48
all the fractured relationships that are going on in this space.
1:04:51
You can see who holds grudges against who.
1:04:54
You can see that no one really has any respect for Gary, even
1:04:57
though he's the leader. You can see that there's some
1:04:59
sort of history between Clark and Childs and they don't get
1:05:01
on. But Creedy doesn't really trust
1:05:03
anyone, and all that's really important because that
1:05:06
contributes to how this team falls apart and just completely
1:05:09
feels to deal with this threat. And lastly, one of the best
1:05:13
things about this film, and it all comes from the writing, is
1:05:15
that streak of ambiguity that runs throughout the whole film.
1:05:18
And the right really brings that out.
1:05:20
You know who did get to the blood bags and when?
1:05:23
What is the deal with Mccready's shredded long Johns?
1:05:25
What does happen to Fuchs? You know, the red herring about
1:05:29
Clark spending so much time with the dog and he actually turns
1:05:32
out to be human? All that's in the right, and I
1:05:34
think it's really, really strong.
1:05:36
Yeah, I agree. I think the writing's very good
1:05:38
on the whole. It's got a strong story taken
1:05:40
from the novella, of course, and it's a kind of story we've seen
1:05:42
many, many times. A group of people in a confined
1:05:45
space and it disgusts an alien, killing them one by one.
1:05:49
Even just within a few years of the Thing, we've got alien
1:05:51
aliens and Predator or basically telling the same high level
1:05:54
story. So we've seen it before, but
1:05:57
Bill Lancaster adopted it. Well, there's not huge depth to
1:06:00
the characters in terms of back story or knowing much about
1:06:02
them, but I think it still works.
1:06:04
I think that's probably testament to Carbon and the
1:06:06
cast, maybe more than the writing, but Lancaster does what
1:06:09
he needs to with the characters. Where the writing stands out
1:06:12
though for me, and this is the part of the writing that makes
1:06:14
The Thing. The thing is the theme of
1:06:16
paranoia that runs from the end of the first act right till the
1:06:19
final seconds of the film. Once the scientists know the
1:06:22
creature can look like them, This is undercurrent of tension
1:06:24
and mistrust. The powers every single scene,
1:06:27
and that will make. That's what makes The Thing move
1:06:29
away from Alien and the rest of them.
1:06:30
For me, this was the early 80s, of course, where the aid
1:06:34
epidemic was all over the news. So the idea of not being able to
1:06:37
tell who's infected just by sight, only blood tests can
1:06:40
reveal it. We'll see that in The Thing.
1:06:42
It's also been said that the narrative of The Thing reflects
1:06:45
communism, McCarthyism, and the Cold War and the idea that
1:06:48
anybody at any time can become the enemy, like an enemy within.
1:06:52
Again, we'll see that in The Thing.
1:06:53
So it's very much a product of its time, the writing in terms
1:06:55
of reflecting what was going on in the West at the time, which I
1:06:58
really like. It dates the film, but in the
1:07:00
best way possible by making it really relevant to when it was
1:07:03
made and negative in the writing for me, which goes slightly
1:07:07
again from Matt was saying, is that there's so many things go
1:07:10
unexplained. There's plot holes you could
1:07:11
drive a snow plow through at times, but I think even that has
1:07:15
worked in the film's favour because there's so many theories
1:07:17
out there about all the different aspects of the film,
1:07:19
which I'm not entirely convinced at all that we're going for at
1:07:22
the time. I think they did plot holes, to
1:07:24
be honest. And as a result though, this is
1:07:26
ambiguity about the life cycle of the creature that I find
1:07:29
interesting. Like the question I find most
1:07:31
interesting of all is when somebody is the thing, do they
1:07:34
know they're the thing? I don't.
1:07:35
I don't think we ever find out. And I find that really
1:07:38
interesting. So positive for me, mostly
1:07:41
slightly mixed bag in some ways. The writing is very good, really
1:07:44
solid in terms of the story and character and the theme of
1:07:46
paranoia and reflections it sends back to the early 80s.
1:07:49
America is where it really, really stands up for me still,
1:07:51
and where it really impresses. Yeah, exactly the same as you
1:07:54
guys. I think it's just the paranoia
1:07:56
that comes across, that sense of cost, of phobia that comes
1:07:59
across. I think that's all in the
1:08:01
writing. But the thing that strikes me
1:08:02
about this whole film is the dialogue.
1:08:04
There's just no fat on that whatsoever.
1:08:06
Every every line that's spoken is makes sense.
1:08:09
And the exposition doesn't feel like exposition.
1:08:13
Like it's one of them rare films where you want to hear what the
1:08:16
fuck's going on, even though they know exactly what's going
1:08:18
on really quickly. Like Blair knows exactly what's
1:08:20
going on. Oh, this cell is replicated.
1:08:22
You see that? That's not a dog.
1:08:23
That's the thing. And you're just kind of like,
1:08:25
this is the kind of lecture I want to sit in.
1:08:29
This is the kind of shit I want. I want to hear this.
1:08:31
Like, you just want to absorb all of this information because
1:08:35
it's left off the page for the first, what, 15 minutes, 20
1:08:39
minutes? And then you start
1:08:40
understanding. And then when these guys
1:08:42
understand, you start to understand.
1:08:44
And I think that's the genius of the writing.
1:08:46
And I know this hearts back a lot more to the novella than it
1:08:49
does to the the original, the thing from the world, which was
1:08:53
just almost like Frankenstein's monster getting set on fire and
1:08:56
chomping about wouldn't work as well.
1:08:59
I mean, it's great. It is good for what it is, but I
1:09:01
mean, that is definitely a product of its time.
1:09:03
But I think this wholeheartedly, hand on heart, I think this was
1:09:07
miles ahead of its time. I think this was about 15 years
1:09:11
too early for audiences to grasp this paranoia, this this kind of
1:09:16
concept of people not trusting each other.
1:09:18
And the, you say, John, the AIDS pandemic was just coming up and
1:09:21
there was a blood test thing and people didn't understand what
1:09:24
was going on. I mean, we're coming out of the
1:09:25
70s. We're coming out of the, the,
1:09:27
the whole heyday of like, you know, freedom and free speech.
1:09:30
And then all of a sudden you're claustrophobic and you're cold
1:09:33
and you're in the middle of Norway and you're surrounded by
1:09:36
something that you don't understand.
1:09:38
So something else is going to come in.
1:09:39
So even from our Times Now being in lockdown, being in
1:09:44
quarantine, being in quarantine from a disease that we don't
1:09:46
understand, The thing is now relevant even more so.
1:09:51
And it's just a way, way ahead of its time.
1:09:53
And I think that's what's that's what's Lancaster's done really
1:09:57
well with that, right? And has taken that concept and
1:10:00
made it timeless because he's putting in a place that doesn't
1:10:03
age and or to get never gets old.
1:10:04
It's the same. If you went there now, you'd
1:10:06
probably like Mcgree. Well, I'm going then, yeah.
1:10:10
Yeah, that's why I'm going next week look more like Windows.
1:10:14
All three of us, yeah, you're right.
1:10:18
It's still relevant, especially with the pandemic and the way
1:10:21
things have been. I mean, Matt left the recording
1:10:23
before to go and answer his dog Bargain.
1:10:25
I'm not entirely sure who's came back.
1:10:26
Exactly. I did, yeah.
1:10:28
Yeah, I've had some very dodgy looks since then.
1:10:30
You sound like an hour, an hour and a half.
1:10:34
The hell you're looking to me like that for?
1:10:38
Has he got the same? Beard So like I mentioned, The
1:10:42
thing is an adaptation of the John W Campbell Junior novella
1:10:45
Who Goes There from 1938. It's actually a much more
1:10:48
faithful adaptation than The Thing from Another World movie
1:10:50
was, but there are still differences to the book.
1:10:54
Would you like to hear what they are?
1:10:57
Absolutely. So the Norwegian scientists and
1:11:00
crew aren't in the book. So no scene where McCready and
1:11:03
Copper visit their camp or anything like that.
1:11:06
You mentioned the scientists there, Westie.
1:11:08
The book has 37 American scientists, which far too many.
1:11:15
And it's a short story that's too much.
1:11:17
Which Bill Lancaster reduced to 12 for the best, obviously.
1:11:21
And in the book, the blood test is the climax of the story
1:11:24
rather than the end of the second act.
1:11:26
I can see that man, totally see that.
1:11:28
Yeah, I think in a short story it will work really well because
1:11:30
the climax. Yeah, yeah, brilliant.
1:11:33
No award recognition for Bill Lancaster for writing The Thing.
1:11:35
And after the film, he didn't do anything.
1:11:38
Not in movies, anyway. The Thing was a last feature
1:11:41
screenplay he ever wrote. I think it killed a few people's
1:11:44
careers, this film at the time, Yeah, fortunately.
1:11:48
Shame. Well, somebody's reputation
1:11:51
definitely wasn't affected by the thing, was the guy who
1:11:53
composed the music. He was a legendary Ennio
1:11:56
Morricone, a veteran of TV and film by this point.
1:12:00
He was most famous for his work with Sergio Leone on the iconic
1:12:03
Dollars trilogy. But this was the first time he
1:12:05
worked with Carpenter. Quite the departure in terms of
1:12:08
genre for Ennio Morricone, then, is his work.
1:12:10
Yeah, Good. Well, yeah, it's great.
1:12:13
I mean, from what you can really gather from it, because it's not
1:12:17
obvious at all. When you watch a film, you think
1:12:20
about what was the Morricone score like?
1:12:22
I don't really know because it just, it really accentuates
1:12:26
emotion and it's there and I think it's the things theme and
1:12:30
it's just got that, you know, that heartbeat that.
1:12:32
Bum, bum. It's incredible.
1:12:34
That's what plays in my head whenever anyone asks me about
1:12:37
sports. What's your match?
1:12:42
Did you leave us alone? But that's it.
1:12:48
But it's when the spaceship's discovered, that's when to me,
1:12:51
it really lifts. It's kind of it's it's a back
1:12:54
story, Morricone. And here he's he's like giving
1:12:56
you the back story about the thing has been through, but he's
1:12:59
not giving you what it's going through or any kind of future.
1:13:03
It always seems like it's one of them brilliant moves by Compton
1:13:07
that give you like something from the past because from like
1:13:11
the, you know, the Dollars trilogy from Once Upon a Time in
1:13:14
the West, from Once Upon a Time in America, you just think of
1:13:16
Morricone and you think classic, real classic.
1:13:20
Score. And it gives the thing this kind
1:13:23
of real classic back story just through the score, like when
1:13:27
that camera pans to that block of the ice, they've gone from
1:13:30
the spaceship. You see the spaceship revealed,
1:13:32
but then there's that pant, the ice and it's just this whole
1:13:34
like, it's like telling me a story of like this.
1:13:37
It's really sombre, but it's really, it's really angry and
1:13:40
it's really like upsetting at the same time and just these
1:13:44
like 3 or 4 notes and it's beautifully done.
1:13:46
But if what's your favorite Morricone score?
1:13:49
I would never, ever, ever say the thing, but it really should
1:13:52
be up there. But it's so subtle, it's
1:13:55
perfect. Yeah, a strange collaboration,
1:13:58
Carbon and Morricone, isn't it? Not two people you've put
1:14:01
together slash out into spaghetti westerns.
1:14:03
So bit of an odd couple at the time, but it didn't matter at
1:14:07
all. Morricone is a master, so he
1:14:09
could turn his hand up just about anything successfully, and
1:14:11
that's what he does here. That bum, bum, bum bum baseline
1:14:15
that represents the heartbeat of The Thing and undercuts the main
1:14:17
theme is just fantastic. And I think Morricone is clearly
1:14:21
channelling Carpenter here as well at this point.
1:14:24
Carbon had written the music to all of his films before The
1:14:26
Thing, and I think it sounds like a Cotton that score.
1:14:30
I mean, the arrangements are way more complex than Halloween or a
1:14:33
song on Precinct 13, but it's got that brooding bass and the
1:14:36
catchy melody style that Cotton that stuff usually has.
1:14:39
Cotton that won the tension and paranoia and the mood Morricone
1:14:42
set in. The music gives him all of that
1:14:44
from the very first scenes right till the final one.
1:14:47
I think to me this the score of The Thing sounds like Morricone
1:14:51
and Cotton that both at the same time.
1:14:52
You've got to be some composer to pull that off because the two
1:14:55
styles couldn't be more different.
1:14:56
Morricone certainly was that. So yeah, fantastic work.
1:15:01
It's like, yeah, it's like Morricone on a scene, Yeah.
1:15:03
It's. Like he's just felt the
1:15:04
symptoms. A bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.
1:15:07
Yeah, I sound like drunk. That's easy.
1:15:10
Bomb bomb, right? Fucking yes it is.
1:15:13
Well I listened to the other day actually in preparation for this
1:15:16
and it it did make me chuckle when I saw like the soundtrack
1:15:19
album what all the tracks are called.
1:15:21
The the tracks are called like beastiality solid.
1:15:24
Really. Yeah, Sterilizers.
1:15:27
The last one is just called despair.
1:15:29
It's like, you know, it's like a Joy Division album or something.
1:15:32
That's. That's my funeral song and I'll
1:15:36
have the Braveheart soundtrack and then despair the thing.
1:15:40
Braveheart soundtrack, then oh, then despair.
1:15:44
Handle that bastard. No, but this, this score, in
1:15:52
some ways it it's almost classic Morricone it it's obviously very
1:15:55
subtle compared to his work with Leone or the Untouchables, for
1:15:59
example. But he's still using strings,
1:16:01
he's still using wood with woodwind instruments.
1:16:03
But then it's how he lays in those synth tracks as well,
1:16:05
which are the most Carpenter esque bits of music that
1:16:08
Carpenter never wrote. And it all works it.
1:16:11
All works, yeah. And it all just works so
1:16:13
beautifully together. And if I had to sum the
1:16:15
soundtrack up Thorn one word, I think it would be dread because
1:16:18
that's what this music just gives me throughout.
1:16:20
Every different bit just fills you with dread.
1:16:22
And I think there's so much inherent tension in this music
1:16:25
that's really evocative. And it's one of the first films
1:16:28
I remember. I sat and I watched it at the
1:16:30
very, very end credits just because the music is so good at
1:16:33
the end when it is that heartbeat sound and it's the
1:16:37
synths going underneath really like kind of two or three notes,
1:16:40
I think just in opposition. But it just grips you at the
1:16:43
end. And one, one bit of music I
1:16:45
really like in this, it's that scene that blares out his
1:16:48
computer working out how long humanity's got left, which is no
1:16:52
dialogue, just the music. And you've got that ticking
1:16:55
clock sound because he's got the stopwatch going at the same
1:16:57
time. That's laid into it.
1:16:58
And I find that thing just so chilly.
1:17:01
It works really well. It's great music.
1:17:03
Yeah, well, Compton's first choice of composer wasn't
1:17:06
Morricone, it was actually Jerry Goldsmith, which I would imagine
1:17:10
that's because of his influence on Alien, right?
1:17:12
Yeah. But yeah, he he totally passed
1:17:14
on that and then suggested Morricone.
1:17:17
So Comptna flew to Rome to meet him.
1:17:20
Like from LA he flew all the way to Rome, spent a bit of time
1:17:24
with him. And Morricone, he said he sat
1:17:26
with him, he listened to a few bits and he just said less notes
1:17:30
and then left. That's it.
1:17:34
Must have. Been away from LA to Rome.
1:17:36
Listen to it. Oh, that's really good.
1:17:38
Less of that. Bye.
1:17:44
So no big award recognition for his work on the thing for any
1:17:47
Morricone. He was, though I don't know if
1:17:50
you know this, nominated for A Razi for worst musical score.
1:17:54
For this film, yeah, fuck off. Outrageous.
1:17:58
Surely now that's that is. Outrageous.
1:18:01
Also, some of his unused work on the thing turned up in The
1:18:04
Hateful 8 by Time 2. Years later, that's right.
1:18:07
Where he won an Oscar, so I don't know what's going on then.
1:18:11
And the hateful it is basically the thing without the thing
1:18:14
being in it. Let's be honest.
1:18:15
We'll talk about that later. So Morricone passed away at the
1:18:19
age of 91 in 2020, sadly, but his legacy in status as movie
1:18:24
legend is sealed. And to finish on the maestro on
1:18:26
the Thing, I've got a quote from Carbon himself.
1:18:29
He said the studio had no interest in me scoring the
1:18:33
Thing, so we hired Anyo. He was fabulous.
1:18:36
He added something to it that I didn't ask for.
1:18:38
This deep, tragic sense that this is the end of things.
1:18:41
Oh my God, I was so delighted with it.
1:18:44
Yeah, So what? I'll be.
1:18:45
Yeah. Give me Apocalypse any day.
1:18:47
Apocalypse Right Now by Morricone.
1:18:49
Despair. The thing was the first time
1:18:53
Carlton that I'd work with Bill Lancaster and Ennio Morricone.
1:18:57
Not so with the cinematographer. Dean Cundy was a director of
1:19:00
photography on The Thing and it was the 4th time he worked with
1:19:02
JC after Halloween, The Fog and Escape from New York. 1 of
1:19:07
Cotton has more significant collaborators is Dean Cuddy.
1:19:10
So what do we think of his work on The Thing?
1:19:13
I love Dean Cuddy, you know, and what you do.
1:19:16
I was so tenderly said. That wasn't a profound comment.
1:19:21
I didn't. I don't really expect him to be
1:19:23
like, you don't expect him to be the guy who's pulled this off.
1:19:28
Like he's just, he's so, he's so good and just so focused.
1:19:33
And I think a lot of his work, people don't even understand or
1:19:37
realise what he's done. But his work on this is is
1:19:41
brilliant because you don't notice it at all.
1:19:43
You don't know when it's too dark.
1:19:45
You don't know when it's overlit.
1:19:46
Every single element of this scene, every single element of
1:19:51
of every sequence has its place and has its look and has its
1:19:54
light and light and flamethrowers against snow.
1:19:57
For somebody to be able to shoot this the way it is from a, from
1:20:01
looking at Mccrady talking to a computer at the start, to then
1:20:05
shooting a spider head like scurrying across the floor 40
1:20:09
minutes later and for them both to look believable and you're
1:20:11
like, OK, that's fine. That's down to Cundy.
1:20:13
He's absolutely he's got. Total control over this and he
1:20:16
nails it. And I've seen interviews with
1:20:18
him and he seems like a really lovely, lovely down worth man
1:20:21
and he's just like whatever you need I can do.
1:20:24
And you know what? He does it here 100%.
1:20:27
I think the cinematography has pretty stunning, as impressive
1:20:30
as just about anything Dean Cundy's done for me, and he's
1:20:32
been DP on Storm Cold Classics. I think there's two challenges
1:20:35
he had to work with and overcome on the thing, and I think he
1:20:38
succeeds brilliantly at both. The 1st is what I keep talking
1:20:41
about. The underlying sense of
1:20:43
paranoia, the cotton that wanders and the ominous threat
1:20:45
that comes with it. To translate that into visuals
1:20:48
is no mean feat, but Kundi pulls it off.
1:20:51
Lots of shots of long corridors and the camera creeping down
1:20:54
them. Wide shots of the snowy and
1:20:56
Arctic wasteland to give a sense of how isolated the scientists
1:20:59
are. The camera seems to move quite a
1:21:01
lot, but it moves so slowly most of the time that you maybe don't
1:21:05
notice it consciously, but I think you feel it.
1:21:07
Cundi never really takes over the film, I don't think, because
1:21:10
this isn't Scorsese or Spielberg.
1:21:11
There's no formula tracking shots or Dolly zooms, but Cundi
1:21:14
stitched into it start to finish without ever really noticing
1:21:17
them. I think it's really, really
1:21:18
impressive. And I think the second challenge
1:21:21
is working with the practical effects.
1:21:23
There'd be nothing quite like that thing itself in scene in
1:21:25
films at the time, and Cundi has to shoot it and make it look
1:21:28
good and not like a puppet. And what I like the Cundy and
1:21:31
cotton that do is that the film of Rob has a very muted colour
1:21:34
palette, lots of like Browns, greys, beige and the costume and
1:21:37
production design and a lot of white.
1:21:39
Obviously with the snow setting that was surely intentional so
1:21:42
that when the thing shows up and reveals itself, it's really eye
1:21:45
popping and to pull that off, the creature never looks
1:21:47
anything out of an extraordinary.
1:21:49
That's not all down the Dean Cundy of course, but he's the
1:21:51
one shooting it and he certainly plays his part with it.
1:21:54
So I think he's fantastic up there with anything he's done
1:21:57
for me, yeah. Absolutely.
1:21:58
I mean, if you look at Alien, how little that was lit, just to
1:22:01
get an essence of the Alien this, you see everything.
1:22:04
Yeah, but you see it in flashlights, You see it in just
1:22:08
a bit more of a creative way. And then you when you see it
1:22:10
all, you just kind of go. That's absolutely disgusting.
1:22:16
I mean, he's obviously Carpenters go to Guy and they've
1:22:18
got that harmonious relationship because Carpenter knows Cundi
1:22:21
will deliver what he needs for this film.
1:22:23
And for me, it's about creating that atmosphere.
1:22:25
And I think Cundi's work is so pivotal and doing that.
1:22:28
I mean, obviously the location shooting that gives you that
1:22:31
sense of how freezing it is. But I think Cundi does a really
1:22:34
great job linking that with all the stuff that's linking that
1:22:37
with all the interior scenes. They seem to just call this no,
1:22:41
no disconnect between the outside and the inside in this
1:22:44
film. So The thing is really well done
1:22:46
and I just love it's lighting. I think it's lighting.
1:22:48
It's so clever using the flares, using the flame force, using the
1:22:51
light bulbs that you can see, you said, under the ceiling of
1:22:53
the compound. And it's never overlit.
1:22:56
And I know that he did work very, very closely with Rob
1:22:58
Portine. And they had discussions about
1:23:00
the best way to light the effects.
1:23:02
Because if you over like those, if you show too much this film's
1:23:06
dead, you know you'll. Yeah, you're going to see all
1:23:08
the indrogates of the rubber and.
1:23:10
All that exactly. You're going to see the stuff,
1:23:12
hold them up, you're going to kill any effect that the film is
1:23:15
aiming for. So all that is really well done
1:23:18
by him. And as well as that, I think he
1:23:20
also gets a real depth to some of these images.
1:23:22
And I think he makes something I've never really seen before.
1:23:25
I've never seen someone else do this, but he just makes really
1:23:28
interesting and creepy use of empty space.
1:23:31
Like we've mentioned it, those long corridors in that sense of
1:23:34
space that you get around and behind these characters, you're
1:23:37
almost constantly expecting something to pop into view,
1:23:40
something to jump up behind them, and it never does.
1:23:42
It's not that kind of film, but the way Cundy shoots and films
1:23:45
everything, it just puts you in a constant sense of unease just
1:23:48
with that kind of space behind everyone.
1:23:51
He does it so well, doesn't he? With nobody in it.
1:23:53
It it's the end of Halloween when he's going around the house
1:23:57
and damn shots and it's just, it's the same in the thing when
1:23:59
it's like there's the corridor, it's a steady come out and
1:24:03
there's nothing there and you're like, what the fuck?
1:24:05
But he just does it so well. It's exactly that.
1:24:07
It's that bit where it's it's, it's very briefly done, but so
1:24:11
effective. The camera just moves through
1:24:13
the lab in the corridor and then you just get that shot of the
1:24:16
Requiem, which is completely empty.
1:24:17
No one's in it, but it's still really unnerving, just the way
1:24:21
you shoot it. And I can't even like wrap my
1:24:23
head around how you do that, how you get that emotional response
1:24:27
from an empty room. The thing was Cundy and cotton.
1:24:30
That's 4th collaboration like I mentioned, and after the work
1:24:33
you did in the previous three, JC was always going to bring
1:24:35
Cundi back in here. So what's your favorite shot of
1:24:38
his in the film? Mine comes from what I think is
1:24:41
one of the best scenes in the film.
1:24:42
We've mentioned it briefly and it's when McCready and Copper
1:24:44
have gone to the Norwegian base to find out what's going on
1:24:47
there. Then you get that bit when
1:24:49
McCready goes a little bit further ahead of Copper, and
1:24:51
then he shouts for Copper to follow him, to come and look at
1:24:53
what he's found. And you just get that lovely
1:24:56
shot if the camera just pulling back away from Copper as he
1:24:59
advances down the corridor. But then it switches perspective
1:25:02
and then the camera starts to push in instead into that
1:25:05
storage space. Slammer Creedia standing.
1:25:07
And you've just got that massive slab of ice that's got something
1:25:10
huge coughed out of it. It's sore, threatening in in a
1:25:15
way, you know, you just. Get a Yeah.
1:25:17
That's it. That's exactly it.
1:25:18
Like, holy shit, what was in there?
1:25:20
And I've just just that switch in perspective between the two.
1:25:23
I think it's fantastically well done.
1:25:26
It is brilliant, not just how it looks, but narratively as well.
1:25:29
Like you say, you're thinking, what the hell was in that?
1:25:32
I mean, I've got a fair few, but the one that stands out for me
1:25:35
is the. It is the ending when Mccreed,
1:25:38
he's setting up the Chargers and he's got the whole the, the
1:25:41
dynamite, he's got the plunger there and he pulls it up and
1:25:43
Knowles just walks in to this noise.
1:25:46
And it really pisses me off because like what you're going
1:25:48
in there for, you know, something's going on, Like just
1:25:51
leave it alone. But Mccreed hears it and he
1:25:54
turns and you get that great, great shot of him turning.
1:25:57
And then the camera then just goes to like this, this almost
1:25:59
like wide track and shot back. And you've got the creedy
1:26:02
completely in silhouette and he creeps forward and creeps
1:26:05
forward. He's got the dynamite and he
1:26:06
doesn't know what to do and you don't know what to do.
1:26:08
And then he comes into that red light.
1:26:11
And it's like, to me, that's like just such a hero moment,
1:26:14
but so late in the film. It's like an Indiana Jones
1:26:18
moment at the last scene. Like this is what I'm here for.
1:26:22
And that's just before the whole like, well, fuck you two and the
1:26:25
whole thing kind of comes up. But it's just the way that that
1:26:28
sets that up. Reminds us of Raiders might
1:26:30
attempt to do myself any single like hero kind of reveal
1:26:34
because, you know, now McCready needs to be the hero.
1:26:37
And whether you like it or not, you're singing it.
1:26:39
And subliminally, that's what Cundy does.
1:26:41
And I think it's fantastic. Again, no award recognition for
1:26:44
the movie, even though we've just waxed lyrical about the
1:26:46
cinematography, but it didn't hinder Dean Cundy's career any.
1:26:51
After the thing he went on the BDP on hits like Back to the
1:26:54
Future, Who, Free and Roger Rabbit, Who Death Becomes her,
1:26:58
Jurassic Park, Apollo 13. I mean some career that isn't
1:27:01
it. Yeah, Massive and psycho too,
1:27:04
which no one talks about enough because it's fucking great.
1:27:06
Credit for the astonishing look of the thing Can't all be late
1:27:09
at Dean Cundy's door, though. We've talked about it since the
1:27:11
start of the episode and the practical effects work involved
1:27:14
in creating the creature is bloody bonkers and brilliant in
1:27:18
equal measure. Mental.
1:27:21
The special effects maker and designer on the film was Rob
1:27:24
Boutine. He headed up the effects team
1:27:26
responsible for both dreaming up and then realizing the thing
1:27:29
itself. And he had some pedigree coming
1:27:31
into the film, having worked on Piranha, The Howling and The Fog
1:27:35
with Carpenter. What was his work like here
1:27:37
though? Well, it's literally like
1:27:40
nothing else that have been done so far.
1:27:43
I mean, I know before this and apart from like his previous
1:27:46
work, the year before this, you've got Evil Dead, I guess.
1:27:48
But unlike that film, none of these are done for laughs.
1:27:52
There's nothing remotely goofy or comical about what he's
1:27:55
trying to achieve here. And it's the sheer range of
1:27:58
effects that he's got to do. Dogs, humans, the remains of the
1:28:02
find at the Norwegian camp, and nothing looks the same.
1:28:05
Nothing ever feels like he's, oh, you know, he ran out of
1:28:07
time, so he just copied what he did before.
1:28:10
And if you compare to the effects working Alien, which we
1:28:12
talked about, which is great. So in that film you've got 1
1:28:16
Alien suit, you've got one stationary pop for the face of
1:28:18
it, and you've got one puppet that you see very briefly.
1:28:21
But here Martin has got to create so much, so many varied
1:28:26
creatures, creatures that move in all kinds of different ways,
1:28:29
and not one of them feels and one of them lets the film down.
1:28:32
And it absolutely just blows my mind.
1:28:33
He does this at the age of 22. I mean, it is, it's incredible
1:28:38
because he had that much passion and he had that much fire to
1:28:41
prove himself and to push the limits on what was possible.
1:28:44
And he worked on this film for over a year and he didn't take a
1:28:47
single day off, seven day weeks for over a year because he just
1:28:51
had that fire in his belly. And he just had these ideas and
1:28:54
he had this one project that enabled him to just throw all of
1:28:59
that in there. There's no other project he
1:29:00
could have done where you would have this amount of create
1:29:04
creative license to do that. And that intensity and
1:29:07
determination is just so clear to see.
1:29:10
And what he's put on screen, it's, you know, just another
1:29:13
astonishing aspect of the film. Yeah, first of all, and you
1:29:18
mentioned it there, Matt Rob or team was 22 when he started work
1:29:21
on the thing. I mean, what the hell?
1:29:24
How? No idea how he pulled all this
1:29:26
off at that age. They actually wanted Rick Baker
1:29:28
at first, who was freshman winning an Oscar for An American
1:29:31
Werewolf in London and he was too busy for the went.
1:29:34
Let's just get this kid in there instead then.
1:29:37
I mean, we've talked about a lot of impressive things doing this
1:29:39
podcast for the last however long, but being the main guy
1:29:42
responsible for the effects on the thing at 22 years old is up
1:29:46
there ridiculous. And it's ridiculous because the
1:29:50
practical effects are all time top tier standard, deserve to be
1:29:53
mentioned in the same conversations as Star Wars,
1:29:55
aliens, Jurassic Park for me. They're that good.
1:29:58
I think what's impressive is when you talk about
1:30:01
groundbreaking visual effects in movies, you're usually talking
1:30:05
about using new technologies that didn't exist to show us
1:30:07
things that have never been done before.
1:30:09
We talked about that on our Star Wars episode with the creation
1:30:11
of ILM, on our Terminator Two episode with the advent of CGI.
1:30:16
But that's not what Bo Team's done here.
1:30:17
He wasn't working with a big budget.
1:30:19
He's working with existing technologies that affect teams
1:30:21
that he used for years and years.
1:30:23
And just through his passion, creativity, and being a bit of a
1:30:26
maniac, he uses all that to create something that we've not
1:30:29
seen before. He set the ball for himself
1:30:32
massively high. It should have been impossibly
1:30:34
high, what he's trying to pull off.
1:30:35
And maybe the naivety of youth helped.
1:30:37
It probably did. But he pulls all of it off.
1:30:40
I don't know how. Every time the thing reveals
1:30:42
itself in the film, the movie goes up a notch.
1:30:44
Each time we see it, it's more batshit crazy than the last time
1:30:48
we saw it. And each time it looks great.
1:30:50
I've watched this film a few times with people who haven't
1:30:53
seen it before. And the spider head, the chest
1:30:56
chamber, Norris's head. Every time the response is a
1:30:59
mixture of horror and laughter, which I think is exactly what
1:31:02
the film makers were going for, the things that classic
1:31:04
nowadays. And it wouldn't be, I don't
1:31:06
think, without Rob Boutine. I totally agree.
1:31:10
I've seen a great some great interviews with Rob Boutine on
1:31:13
YouTube and he's checked them out because he's a fucking
1:31:17
maniac. He's a.
1:31:18
Top guy. Absolute.
1:31:20
Let's got this lead back kind of surfer attitude.
1:31:23
If I'm going to go for a pint with anyone after, it's going to
1:31:26
be as soon as possible. I'm coming.
1:31:29
If you do, he's great. Yeah, yeah.
1:31:31
But like, sign up Patreon. I'll send you an invite 14.
1:31:38
He's so good and so strong. I mean, he got on the fog
1:31:42
because he he crept into the the set and he said he was like he
1:31:46
said, John comrade, I'm a big fan.
1:31:47
Can I do anything on this? He's like, well, what can you
1:31:49
do? He's like, I do special makeup
1:31:51
effects. He said, well, go and fucking do
1:31:52
it then. So he did it and Compton was
1:31:54
like, Jesus Christ, they're amazing.
1:31:55
I'm remaking the thing. Do you want to do the thing?
1:31:58
He's like, you're remaking the thing and you want me to do it?
1:32:00
He's like, yeah, I'll fucking do it.
1:32:02
Yeah, I'm a huge fan, and he's just like a massive fan of it.
1:32:05
And the real fucking tragedy for me is that this is dying off,
1:32:09
this practical effect, and people think it's funny and it
1:32:12
isn't it. It's fucking amazing when it's
1:32:15
done right, when Kundi shoots it and when Boutine makes it and
1:32:19
it's just there and you're going, yeah, you know what?
1:32:21
This is outrageous. But it's so much fun.
1:32:25
Boutine to me is just complete cinema, 100%.
1:32:30
Absolutely love his work on this.
1:32:32
Yeah, it's really movie magic practical effect, isn't it,
1:32:34
where you watch something and think, how did they do that?
1:32:37
That never happened anymore because you know how they did
1:32:38
it? It was didn't want a computer
1:32:39
with CGI. Yeah, it's fucking boring.
1:32:42
Yeah. Thing is, though, we're talking
1:32:43
about that. And in a way, he was kind of
1:32:46
like almost his own worst enemy with this, like, energy app
1:32:49
because, you know, these punishing working conditions he
1:32:52
was putting himself through. But what he also did, it got to
1:32:54
the point where the stress of working on this and the
1:32:56
schedules and the deadlines were piling up.
1:32:59
So he stopped bothering going home.
1:33:01
He wouldn't go home. He would sleep on the set.
1:33:03
He would sleep in the locker room, He would sleep in the lab
1:33:06
somewhere. And he ended up working 22 hour
1:33:08
days to the point where he was hospitalized with severe
1:33:11
exhaustion and pneumonia because he was plagued with nightmares
1:33:14
of the creatures he was creating as well.
1:33:16
Like, like there's one day Carpenter turned up on set.
1:33:19
And Carpenter was used to at this point, he would turn up and
1:33:21
say, oh, where's Robin? Some say, oh, he's, you know,
1:33:23
asleep under a table over there. And Carpenter was used to the
1:33:26
Carpenter said there was one day he turned up and yes, where it
1:33:29
was. And Rob kind of came up to him.
1:33:30
He just looked at him when you do not look well.
1:33:32
Can someone take this guy to the hospital, please and get him
1:33:35
checked out? And he had severe exhaustion,
1:33:37
pneumonia, nearly killed himself creating this film.
1:33:40
Jesus Christ. Yeah, I know the calm that said
1:33:42
that when he visited Bortin Hospital, Bortin asked him if he
1:33:45
could have a cameo in the film. And calm.
1:33:47
That said, I think you're doing enough.
1:33:48
Wrong. You look too bad to be in the
1:33:52
film. That's how bad he looks.
1:33:59
So on the special effects, we have a question from Patreon.
1:34:03
OK. So a benefit of being a patron
1:34:05
is that we'll answer your questions on the show.
1:34:07
So Peter Sutcliffe, not that one, hopefully.
1:34:11
I hope not. Have you read the thing what
1:34:13
this question is going to be? So, hello, Peter.
1:34:17
Hello, Peter. Hello.
1:34:18
Peter asks which is the best or your favorite version of the
1:34:22
thing when it reveals itself. I don't like any of them.
1:34:28
Like they're all really fucking lifting on there.
1:34:31
They're all disgusting. They're all kind of, you have to
1:34:34
take a step back, you oh, there it is again.
1:34:36
Oh, there it is again. It's like, do I dislike dogs
1:34:39
more than I do humans? What do I want to see the worst
1:34:42
off? But for me, it's when you see
1:34:45
the explosion from Norris and it comes out of the stomach and
1:34:49
it's just on the ceiling, but it's spider like, but you still
1:34:51
got Norris's face but it's redistorted.
1:34:53
His little face just. Reminds me, yeah, that reminds
1:34:56
me of like the posters or the things that I saw and like
1:34:59
Fangoria magazine when I was reading it or stuff that always
1:35:02
seems like the thing, this is it.
1:35:04
And that was, to me, was the image of the thing.
1:35:06
And I was like, oh, well, that's kind of what it looks like.
1:35:08
So for me, that's what sits in my head.
1:35:10
One for me is one I think sometimes doesn't get talked
1:35:13
about as much as the others. And it's what Palmer turns into
1:35:16
after the blood test scene. Because what they do to his
1:35:19
face, I mean his face just like kind of, I mean, looks like his
1:35:22
eyeballs basically pop out in the discussion blood and his
1:35:26
face is getting really massive and swollen.
1:35:28
But it's the reaction of everyone because he's got Childs
1:35:30
and Gary tied up next to him and they're just lifting like trying
1:35:34
to burst, trying to burst out and they can't move an inch.
1:35:38
And they're just absolutely terrified.
1:35:39
And it's the way that like the couch, it just keeps lifting up
1:35:42
and down and smashing in the floor.
1:35:44
And it's one of those shots, I think, how did they do that when
1:35:47
it the Palmer thing just flips up onto the ceiling and sticks
1:35:52
there for a bit in my head. Like my brain is just leaking
1:35:56
out of my ease at this point. Like, what the fuck is going on?
1:35:59
And the loaf I would then land. And this is obviously the bit
1:36:01
where it gets windows, unfortunately.
1:36:03
And his head spits open like a Venus flytrap and then like a
1:36:06
tongue just shoots out and wraps itself around windows.
1:36:10
It's just insane. But yeah, I love that.
1:36:13
It is and it's disgusting and how quickly you get like a you
1:36:17
get Palmer's face and it's normal.
1:36:19
And then it cuts the McCready and he's like, oh, and then you
1:36:22
cut back at his face just completely gone.
1:36:26
Oh, OK, right, OK, we'll miss the miss the middle section.
1:36:30
Let's just go straight to the fucking terrifying, OK?
1:36:33
No awards nominations for Rob Bow team for the thing which
1:36:36
isn't really on. Is it?
1:36:38
Outrageous. The winner of best visual
1:36:40
effects at the Oscars that year? Oh.
1:36:44
Gosh. What was it, 82?
1:36:47
Was it Raiders? It wasn't Raiders, it was 80.
1:36:52
Yeah, of course it. Wasn't it?
1:36:54
Also nominated were Blade Runner and Polar Geist.
1:36:57
All were the nominations, but so was the thing.
1:36:59
Surely isn't it? Oh, huge, yeah.
1:37:01
Over Polar Geist, I would say definitely.
1:37:03
Yeah, after The Thing, Rob Bortin had made his mark on
1:37:07
Hollywood, and his career grew from there.
1:37:09
He worked on some big titles like In a Space, RoboCop, Total
1:37:13
Recall, Seven, Fight Club, Mission Impossible and also Game
1:37:17
of Thrones. So The Thing was a highly
1:37:21
collaborative project. John Carpenter was at the
1:37:23
steering wheel, of course, but without contributions by the
1:37:25
likes of Bill Lancaster, Ennio Morricone, Dean Cundy and maybe
1:37:29
especially Rob Bortin, the film may not have became the classic
1:37:32
it's now regarded as. Oh, certainly not 14 for the
1:37:36
win. Give that boy an Oscar.
1:37:38
The. End.
1:37:45
After the carnage of the defibrillator scene, nobody
1:37:48
trusts anybody on the end of the Thing.
1:37:50
Sees it all come to a head in a couple of big sequences.
1:37:53
We're going to talk about the climax of the movie where
1:37:55
Mccreery takes on the creature by himself.
1:37:57
But up first, it's a huge moment with the blood test scene.
1:38:02
Amazing. So unable to take it anymore,
1:38:08
Mccreaty decides to take things into his own hands to root out
1:38:11
the monster flame throwing hand. He ties the other scientists to
1:38:14
the couch and starts testing their blood to see who is who
1:38:17
they say they are one of the most famous moments in the film.
1:38:22
The blood test, isn't it? Oh.
1:38:24
Man, this scene. Here we go, here we.
1:38:27
Go. John Carpenter, right?
1:38:29
He's such a kind of a bastard. I kind of hate him.
1:38:31
Because. One thing I only notice on a
1:38:34
very, very recent viewing of this right is he tells you who
1:38:37
The thing is before you even get to the test, because you've got
1:38:41
McCready giving that speech, explaining to the rest of the
1:38:44
crew what he's going to do. And as he's doing that,
1:38:46
Carpenter does that slow pan over the rest of them.
1:38:50
And as McCready says, we're going to find out who's the
1:38:52
thing, it is Palmer who is dead sender in frame.
1:38:56
And he blinks because that pan continues.
1:38:59
You don't think anything of it. That should be the most obvious
1:39:02
giveaway you've ever seen. But Carpenter's so confident
1:39:05
he's got the audience where he wants them and he's so cocky.
1:39:08
He thinks, you know what I'm going to do here?
1:39:09
I'm going to tell them who it is and they're not even going to
1:39:11
realise. I think that's absolutely
1:39:13
brilliant. And the rest of the scene, I
1:39:16
just find it excruciating because it's so patient and it's
1:39:20
so detailed. There's no music.
1:39:22
Again, his judgement of when to drop the music from scenes is
1:39:26
absolutely incredible, particularly here.
1:39:29
And it's the combination of the sounds you get instead, that
1:39:32
howling wind outside, that low kind of hiss of the
1:39:35
flamethrower, the nails down the blackboard scrape of the hot
1:39:39
wire on the perspex. And then when it hits the blood
1:39:41
and it just goes. I love that.
1:39:44
That's such a great touch. Yeah.
1:39:47
And it just creates this palpable tension, particularly
1:39:49
because McCready does it again and again as he tests them one
1:39:52
by one. And it just continues to build.
1:39:56
He does the same trick that he does with a defibrillator, same
1:39:58
way he distracts you because you've got, again, all these
1:40:01
character interactions and arguments.
1:40:03
So Child's pointing out that McCready is a murderer because
1:40:06
he shot Clark and Clark has turned out to be human.
1:40:09
Gary saying the whole thing is pure nonsense.
1:40:12
And that acting is so intense that when McCready goes, well,
1:40:15
do you last to Gary, you just so suck it in between that conflict
1:40:19
that when Palmer's blood does jump out, it just catches you
1:40:22
off guard. I mean this saying to me.
1:40:24
It's what cinema should be about.
1:40:26
It's just phenomenal. Yeah, I said earlier that the
1:40:30
defibrillator scene is my favorite in the film, and it is
1:40:32
because it's so outrageous. But this is the best scene in
1:40:36
the film. I mean, I'm not seeing anything
1:40:38
profound, seeing that it has the reputation of being the best
1:40:40
scene in the film. I know that when he read the
1:40:43
script, this was the scene that convinced Cotton that he wanted
1:40:45
to make the film, the blood test scene.
1:40:47
It feels like the moment the film's been building to the
1:40:50
mistrust finally got the better of the scientists, and this is
1:40:52
the point where they totally turn against each other.
1:40:54
And Carpenter, this is his wheelhouse.
1:40:56
This sort of thing. Suspense, tension building, and
1:40:59
it all erupts when you're least expecting it to.
1:41:02
We find out Palmer has the thing.
1:41:04
And like you mentioned there, Matt, I love how Karma feeds us
1:41:06
little clues. Some of the ones are during the
1:41:09
build up. Palmer's the only crew member
1:41:10
who doesn't seem agitated or upset.
1:41:12
He's very calm throughout the whole thing.
1:41:14
Also, when McCready has the flamethrower pointing at
1:41:16
everybody, they're all terrified.
1:41:17
But Palmer isn't even looking at McCready, he doesn't give a
1:41:20
shit. And finally, Karma used an eye
1:41:22
light and he shunned it into each of the actor's eyes to make
1:41:24
sure they all had a gleam in their pupils.
1:41:26
Everybody except for Palmer. So the clues are all there.
1:41:30
And that moment when Mccreedy puts the heated wire in the
1:41:32
Palmer's blood and it jumps carbon, that handles that
1:41:35
brilliantly as well. Have you noticed what he does
1:41:37
with Kurt Russell's hand just before the blood jumps out?
1:41:42
So the effects device that they used to create the blood jumping
1:41:44
was one long piece that included a fake hand holding the blood
1:41:48
sample, and they pushed the thin blood sample strand up from
1:41:51
that. So between shots, it cuts from
1:41:53
Kurt Russell's hand holding the sample into the fake hand
1:41:56
holding the sample. But carbon like, cuts to the
1:41:58
fake 1-2 shots before the thing's blood jumps out.
1:42:01
So we get used to the fake hand and don't notice it.
1:42:04
So it's even more of a shot where it jumps, which is really
1:42:06
smart. But yeah, it's a great scene,
1:42:08
the sort of thing Carbonite excels at, and one of his best
1:42:11
ever scenes, surely. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean 100%.
1:42:15
Like, fucking hell. Amazing.
1:42:17
Like you could put any scene on from any film and go.
1:42:20
This is a complete sequence from start and finish.
1:42:23
It's a film in itself, and that's where you get these
1:42:26
really great sequences. And boy, does it fucking kick
1:42:28
off. Like when, when?
1:42:30
When bombers reveal to me the Thing, it's not just like, well,
1:42:34
yeah, I'm the thing. He's like fucking right.
1:42:36
I'm on the ceiling. I'm ripping windows to bits.
1:42:39
And fucking crazy. And the thing I absolutely love
1:42:42
about this is like, they go out, set them on fire, right?
1:42:45
He gets out the door and then there's a dynamite perfect shot,
1:42:48
blows them up and then again, you're back again.
1:42:51
It's cool, it's calm, it's blue. It's very much like, right,
1:42:55
Nothing's happened. And the fact that he's heating
1:42:57
up that wire with a fucking flamethrower is so badass.
1:43:00
It's just so intense. It's like it's, there's nothing
1:43:03
subtle about this scene whatsoever.
1:43:05
And the all the people who dishes are just like the named
1:43:08
and all the names are like written really badly.
1:43:10
They're just like scrolled on. There's nothing precise about
1:43:13
it. Everything's just so unsettling.
1:43:15
And this is just John Carpenter, 100%, this sequence.
1:43:19
If you want to learn about how to shoot tension, if you want to
1:43:22
learn how to shoot something that's going to completely
1:43:25
surprise the audience towards the end of the film, this is an
1:43:28
absolute blueprint. It's amazing.
1:43:31
Yeah. The other thing that makes me
1:43:34
laugh Thoughts Like for arguably the most intense moment of the
1:43:37
film, there is something funny about the same.
1:43:39
Because at the end, obviously the creator uses that flame for
1:43:42
the destroy Palmer thing and then take our windows before he
1:43:45
can turn. But one day Russell turned up on
1:43:47
on set with his head and his face covered in bandages.
1:43:50
And he said to Carpenter, I was practising with a flame phone.
1:43:52
I've been burned, man. Can't finish the scene and
1:43:55
burned to what we're going to do.
1:43:56
Carpenter, like all the way under loads of pressure,
1:43:58
deadlines, budget was just distraught.
1:44:01
You had no idea what he was going to do until Russell just
1:44:03
whipped off the bandages because obviously he was OK.
1:44:05
It was just like tada. What a Dick.
1:44:10
Absolute Dick movement. How did he disguise all of that
1:44:12
here perfectly? Yeah, if you watch the movie
1:44:16
commentary with Carlton and Russell, it's great.
1:44:18
The life best rip it out of each other.
1:44:21
Have a right laugh. Yeah.
1:44:22
It's Russell's just laughing at every single moment the thing
1:44:26
turns into the thing and he's pissing.
1:44:28
Himself. Well worth watching just for
1:44:31
that. So pivotal scene in terms of the
1:44:34
narrative, maybe the most acclaimed scene in the film.
1:44:37
And do you guys agree that it's among John Carlton has best ever
1:44:40
sequences? Easily.
1:44:42
Easily, if not the best. Once Palmer has revealed there's
1:44:45
the thing and McCready burns him to a crisp, we're careering
1:44:48
towards the end of the movie after finding out the blaze.
1:44:51
Also the thing Gary is killed N disappears and McCready blows up
1:44:55
the base which takes the thing with it.
1:44:57
What does it? What does it?
1:45:00
Probably the biggest action scene in the film is climax,
1:45:02
isn't it? Yeah, it's brilliant.
1:45:04
It's like it's real, that kind of real introduction to that 80s
1:45:08
action. You've got stuff kind of coming
1:45:10
out from the floor and it's it's coming up.
1:45:11
And I mean, it's quite questionable the the blue screen
1:45:15
used on this. When the thing comes out with
1:45:16
the floor and the query's looking at it and you kind of go
1:45:19
for the first time, well, Protein's obviously not involved
1:45:21
here. That's fine.
1:45:23
But you're that far into the film and you're that engrossed
1:45:25
in it that you don't really give a shit.
1:45:27
And it's just one thing after the other.
1:45:29
And it's just, you know, all these explosions and all this
1:45:32
real drama based on your lead character knows he's not going
1:45:37
to survive. So you're kind of like, with
1:45:41
them. OK, well, how are we going to go
1:45:43
out? Let's make it as explosive as
1:45:45
possible. And it works.
1:45:46
It works on every level. I love the fact that players
1:45:48
like building this spaceship. And, you know, it's him.
1:45:51
And his hand goes into Gary's face just to shut him up, and
1:45:54
then drags him away. Reminds us that like that,
1:45:57
that's the Maitlands of Beetlejuice.
1:45:59
You know what? He's.
1:46:01
Saying drags them away, but then it it puts loads more questions
1:46:05
on both. Do your clothes disappear when
1:46:07
you become a thing? It's actually a thing is being
1:46:09
used for something else. All of these just little subtle
1:46:13
things are put into this huge action sequence at the end and
1:46:17
it's still subtle and it's still intelligent and it's still
1:46:20
really Carpenter and it's still engaging.
1:46:22
It's fantastic. It is.
1:46:25
I said earlier that in this sequence, Cotton has found a
1:46:28
little wanting compared to the big director has putting
1:46:30
together similar scenes. I mean, it's no end of aliens or
1:46:34
end of Jaws, but that's a very high ball and it is still good.
1:46:38
I really like the moment to discover the almost completely
1:46:40
flying saucer that the Blair thing's been building.
1:46:43
That's another dimension of the pathology of the creature.
1:46:45
Without telling us anything, Cotton, that shows us like any
1:46:48
good director does. Obviously Mccready's kill line,
1:46:51
yeah, fuck you too is fantastic, especially delivered by Kurt
1:46:54
Russell. Again, the practical effects
1:46:56
work is fantastic. I know it took a team of 50
1:46:59
technicians to operate the Thing in this sequence, and I also
1:47:02
know that originally Carlton that toyed with the idea of
1:47:05
using stop motion animation to show the Thing emerging from the
1:47:07
ground in this sequence. Right, right.
1:47:10
You can see the footage of the shot online and leaving it out
1:47:13
was the right choice. I mean it's definitely, I mean
1:47:16
it's top class stop motion animation work, but it doesn't
1:47:18
fit here as it's not been used elsewhere.
1:47:20
Watching it, it reminded me of Wallace and Gromit as much as
1:47:22
anything else. He's after some cheese.
1:47:27
Hey, I mean, well, some grandma are great, but you don't want
1:47:29
them showing up in the climax of your serious science fiction
1:47:31
horror film, do you? Yeah, just being really like
1:47:34
really uneasy just. Some huge mechanical trousers.
1:47:41
The thing should have landed on the moon.
1:47:44
Evil Penguin just wanders into shot.
1:47:46
Yeah, I don't think you say like this is no like Aliens or Jaws
1:47:50
or whatever else. But you cannot take away how
1:47:54
influential this is. I mean, watch the end of this
1:47:57
and then watch the end of Predator.
1:47:59
It's the it's the same as the end of alien to the end of
1:48:02
Aliens. It's it's the same.
1:48:04
It's it's taken that whole demographic and just pushing it
1:48:07
up. But calm that lays the
1:48:09
groundwork here perfectly. It's fantastic as a as a final
1:48:12
sequence. I love how all the characters
1:48:14
the the survivors who left, now they just accept it's the point
1:48:17
of no return. The no, they're not getting out
1:48:19
of there in any way, shape or form.
1:48:21
Yeah, OK. That final kind of iteration of
1:48:24
the thing looks almost like a dinosaur.
1:48:26
That is probably my least favorite.
1:48:28
And like you say, John, that's because the hard time against
1:48:31
them because they did scrap this stop animation.
1:48:33
The concept of it sounds amazing.
1:48:35
It was going to be Blair based on like a giant tentacle and he
1:48:38
had dogs bursting out of his chest.
1:48:40
But obviously it wasn't going to work.
1:48:42
But not air grommet. Yes, and Rad.
1:48:46
And I think it would also be good if Knowles did get a proper
1:48:48
ending instead of just wandering off.
1:48:50
And again, I know that's down the time There was a storyboard
1:48:53
where you see him get grabbed by Blair, and as he's being dragged
1:48:56
off by Blair, he manages to get hold of a piece of wood and he
1:48:59
shoves added in his own neck to kill himself before Blair can
1:49:04
turn him into things. So it's a shame we didn't see
1:49:06
that. But you know, I can understand
1:49:07
why. But everything else about it is
1:49:10
great. I think for all the amazingly
1:49:11
complex effects work he got in the film, one of the most
1:49:15
unnerving bits for me is what I imagine is one of the simplest
1:49:18
shots, which is, which is that bit of Blair's fingers just
1:49:21
burrowing into Gary's face in that bit where you see him just
1:49:24
drag him off by the skin of his face.
1:49:26
That's just terrific. And even by the end of like, how
1:49:29
McCready avoids the cliche of like a really cheesy one liner
1:49:33
as he throws the dynamite, just that simple.
1:49:35
Fuck you two, and he's out of there.
1:49:37
So yeah, it's not an overly protracted final confrontation.
1:49:41
I don't think it needs to be for this film though.
1:49:43
I love the way that you see all the thing and the things that
1:49:46
it's actually been turned into, but just within this film, but I
1:49:50
would like to have seen more. Imagine if like ET was in there,
1:49:53
This thing would be like ET is the thing.
1:49:58
Like when it touches salient at the end, I'll always be right
1:50:01
here. It is.
1:50:02
I'm inside you. You're infected.
1:50:03
It would have been a smash I'd. Love that, that sounds amazing.
1:50:08
I know as well that all the explosions in this sequence were
1:50:11
real. And in the moment where MC Ready
1:50:13
throws the dynamite, it created a much bigger explosion than
1:50:16
Kurt Russell was expecting. If you watch really closely, you
1:50:19
can see him off to the side, like shielding himself.
1:50:24
And when they begin blowing up the camp, they had safety
1:50:26
consultants on set who told Carter how big the explosions
1:50:29
could be, but they warned him they may not be big enough to
1:50:33
bring down the set. If there weren't, Carpenter said
1:50:35
that they didn't really have a backup plan, in his words.
1:50:38
Fortunately, the explosions covered and everything and all
1:50:42
the hard work of the production team was completely destroyed, I
1:50:45
bet. There was delighted with that, I
1:50:49
bet that. Was ridiculous to be in that set
1:50:51
though. Like bringing it all down.
1:50:54
Well, that's the Norwegian camp is the.
1:50:57
It's that camp, isn't it? After they destroyed it, they
1:50:59
just reused it for the Norwegian camp.
1:51:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, really?
1:51:02
Cool, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they shot all that
1:51:04
stuff last. See if we actually built two
1:51:05
sets. Nice.
1:51:06
Just. Just prove the first one.
1:51:08
Yeah. Genius.
1:51:09
OK, then. This is a big, actually
1:51:11
spectacular climax. But it isn't the end of the
1:51:14
film, is it? No.
1:51:16
After Cotton that successfully destroyed the hard work of the
1:51:18
production team, Child's emerges from the base.
1:51:21
There's only him, Mccreaty left, and they sit opposite one
1:51:24
another, sharing Mccreaty's whiskey.
1:51:26
Neither trusts the other. McCready says why don't we just
1:51:29
wait here a while, see what happens?
1:51:32
And we fade to black and ambiguous ending.
1:51:35
And there's about 27,000 theories out there on what's
1:51:38
going on. Wesley, I think you came up with
1:51:40
most of them. So what do we take from the
1:51:45
final scene of the thing? The way that this is left, the
1:51:48
way that it cuts to that wider shot and you see the flames and
1:51:51
hear the bump, bump, bump, bump, and you want, you want something
1:51:54
more. That's the genius of this film
1:51:56
is that you want something more and you're going to have to
1:51:59
create it whether you like it or not.
1:52:01
And there's very few films that will do that.
1:52:03
Very few films that will leave you want more to the point where
1:52:07
you're going to invent it yourself.
1:52:09
And you've got Child's or his breath isn't as relevant as
1:52:13
Mccready's. He's breathing out.
1:52:14
So obviously Child's is is a thing.
1:52:17
And then the theory I really love is that McCready hands him
1:52:20
the Molotov cocktail, that he hands him a bottle full of petal
1:52:24
and child drinks it. And because he's the thing, he
1:52:27
doesn't know the difference between petrol or alcohol or
1:52:29
whatever. And then?
1:52:30
It's a great theory. You get that laugh from the
1:52:32
crazy. I like that.
1:52:33
I like to have that theory as part of like, yeah, that sits
1:52:38
for me. That's good.
1:52:39
I like that. And then if anyone else comes,
1:52:41
oh, that's fucking bullshit. I'll say, well, well, just leave
1:52:43
us alone then, because I'm fine with that.
1:52:46
But that's the genius of cinema, and that's the genius of John
1:52:49
Carpenter is that this came out in 1982 and you're still asking
1:52:54
questions, you're still wondering what it means, you're
1:52:57
still wondering where it goes and it still makes sense.
1:53:00
It's not annoying, it's just fascinating.
1:53:03
That's what I love about it. Yeah, you're right.
1:53:06
There's theory after theory out there on this ending.
1:53:09
Even officially, there's contradictions.
1:53:11
I've got a couple here. So in Bill Lancaster's original
1:53:15
screenplay, he wrote two endings.
1:53:17
One ended with both Mccreery and Child turning into The Thing in
1:53:20
front of each other, and the other ended with Mccreery and
1:53:23
Charles being picked up by rescue helicopter and Mccreery
1:53:25
saying which way to a hot meal. The insinuation being that
1:53:28
neither of them was The Thing. Corbeta wanted an ambiguous
1:53:31
ending and it was actually Kurt Russell who came up with the
1:53:34
idea of the two men just staring each other down, one with fade
1:53:36
to black, and there was another ending that was actually shot by
1:53:40
a Carpenter but not used. In this, it's revealed that
1:53:43
Mccreery survives and is picked up by the rescue team, while
1:53:46
Charles frees us to death and Mccreery then passes a blood
1:53:48
test. So he's not the Thing.
1:53:51
I mean, for me, I don't think anybody anywhere knows any more
1:53:54
about the end than we do, including John Carpenter.
1:53:57
I think Carpenter wanted to make the point about paranoia and
1:53:59
mistrust. It's very difficult to get rid
1:54:00
of. And he does this by McLean child
1:54:03
being in the exact same position they were at the end of the film
1:54:05
as the Word an hour earlier. They don't trust each other.
1:54:09
For me, I don't think calm. I left any clues.
1:54:11
People have analysed the hell out of the scene and lots of
1:54:13
them do seem incredible, but there's far too many
1:54:15
contradictions because there's loads of plot holes in the film
1:54:17
like we talked about. I don't think we're meant to
1:54:19
know. I don't think calm my nose.
1:54:21
I think it's just ambiguous and that's how calm man telling.
1:54:24
It to be nobody knows like what what it's supposed to be.
1:54:27
It's just, yeah, great fun for it.
1:54:29
And yeah. I think it's just incredible.
1:54:31
I think just very much what you guys said.
1:54:34
I can't think of another ending like this that is so open to
1:54:38
interpretation and interpretations that will never
1:54:41
be proven one way or the other because it's completely up to
1:54:44
you what you place importance on.
1:54:46
You know, the fact that child's birth isn't very visible, that
1:54:49
bit just before the the kind of make our final descent when
1:54:53
all's to see and running outside and then the power goes off,
1:54:56
which is still very suspicious, but it's no more than that.
1:55:00
You know what? What is the significance of the
1:55:02
shredded clothes that you get throughout the film?
1:55:05
Does that have anything to do with anything?
1:55:06
Yeah. It's just incredible.
1:55:09
And all these different theories do hold up.
1:55:12
You know, we know that the thing can be different, can be
1:55:16
different people or different things at the same time.
1:55:18
So what happens to the Blair thing?
1:55:20
Does it grab McCready in the tunnel on the way out after he
1:55:23
blows up the main version of it? Who knows?
1:55:25
I mean, for me, I think one that that does sit with me really
1:55:28
well is the fact that they're both human.
1:55:31
But the irony is that they still can't trust each other.
1:55:34
They're still consumed by paranoia and suspicion.
1:55:37
And even in this moment of victory where, OK, they're going
1:55:40
to die, but at least they've destroyed the thing, they can't
1:55:43
celebrate that victory. They're going to die.
1:55:45
Still mistrust. Neat.
1:55:46
So they're still paranoid. That's how I take it.
1:55:49
You never ever know what's gone on.
1:55:53
You never, ever know where you're going to be going.
1:55:55
You've got to let go. And that's one of the big things
1:55:58
that you get from it. It's like it's impossible to
1:55:59
kind of detach each other from this story, detach yourself from
1:56:03
these facts and just let it go. But if you can let the thing go,
1:56:06
you can completely succeed in life.
1:56:08
You can let anything go. You can let.
1:56:09
Anything go. I still haven't let the thing go
1:56:12
at all and many things, but once I learn how to do it, then I'll
1:56:17
know how to move forward and how to be successful in life.
1:56:19
That's the whole point. Well, to finish yourself on this
1:56:23
final scene, I've got a quote from one of the guys who was in
1:56:26
it, Keith David, who plays Childs.
1:56:28
Nice. At a horror convention in 2008,
1:56:31
Keith David was asked if he ever knew who at the end was the
1:56:34
Thing. And he said, well, I don't know
1:56:37
about Kurt, but it sure was Hell wasn't me.
1:56:40
So they have it. Don't adjust it.
1:56:43
That's it, move on. The end of The thing is pretty
1:56:47
unforgettable. Fantastic filmmaking from Calm
1:56:50
that during the famous blood test, a great Kurt whistle one
1:56:53
liner as he blows up the beast and the final scene.
1:56:56
We've answered it. Either child is a thing,
1:56:58
McCready is the thing, they're both a thing, or neither is the
1:57:01
thing. Move on, get on with your life.
1:57:06
I'm trying to. Reception and award.
1:57:16
The thing is the classic nowadays, but how was it
1:57:18
received and released back in 1982?
1:57:21
I think a lot of people listening might know the answer
1:57:23
already. Bloody terribly.
1:57:27
It actually opened on the same day as another famous science
1:57:29
fiction movie that performed terribly on release.
1:57:32
You know what that was? Blade Runner.
1:57:34
Blade Runner. So on a production budget of $15
1:57:37
million, The Thing grossed just $19.6 million.
1:57:41
So when you take into account advertising, marketing and the
1:57:43
below the line costs, it was a Turkey and lost money.
1:57:47
Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:48
The Thing wasn't just to flop with audiences, though.
1:57:50
All the cricks here and there as well.
1:57:52
So Roger Ebert gave the film 2 1/2 out of four and said The
1:57:57
thing is a great bath bag movie. But is it any good?
1:58:01
No, for two reasons, the superficial characterizations
1:58:05
and the implausible behaviour of the scientists.
1:58:07
It's clear that John Carbon are concentrated on the special
1:58:09
effects and allowed the story and people to become secondary.
1:58:13
Really. OK.
1:58:15
Yeah, Nah, Nah, Nah. Disgusting, disgusting opinion.
1:58:20
Respected movie magazine Cinefantastique had the thing on
1:58:23
the front cover and asked is this the most hated movie of all
1:58:27
time? And then in their review they
1:58:30
called it Instant junk and the quintessential moron movie.
1:58:35
Wow. Respected magazine, Do you say
1:58:38
that? They were.
1:58:38
I'm happy to. Be a moron in that case.
1:58:42
And Star Log, who were probably the biggest science fiction
1:58:45
magazine at the time, said John Carpenter was never meant to
1:58:48
direct science fiction horror movies.
1:58:50
He's better suited to directing traffic accidents, train wrecks
1:58:53
and public floggings. OK, that's hard.
1:58:58
Even the director of The Thing From Another World got in on the
1:59:01
ACT. He was called Christy and Nybey
1:59:02
and he said if you want blood, go to the slaughterhouse.
1:59:06
All in all, it's a terrific commercial for G&B Whiskey.
1:59:10
Well, yeah, yours is a massive commercial for setting a big
1:59:13
square man on the fire, so calm down.
1:59:15
Suddenly I'm the other films that people talk about Christy
1:59:19
and Nybey for. After all of this, and this is
1:59:22
pretty sad, after the Thing bombed so horrifically,
1:59:25
Universal cancelled the multi picture deal they'd signed with
1:59:28
John Carpenter, so his career could have been very different
1:59:31
if the Thing had been a success at the time.
1:59:34
As we now know though, all's well that ends well and
1:59:37
following it's releasing home video and television broadcasts,
1:59:39
The Thing gone at a cult following and critical re
1:59:42
evaluation, and over time it's reputation has grown and grown.
1:59:46
It's now regarded as one of the great science fiction horror
1:59:48
movies of all time and an all time classic.
1:59:52
Yeah, definitely is. There was no Oscar recognition
1:59:55
for the thing at the time, as you mentioned, but nowadays on
1:59:57
Rotten Tomatoes it has 85% from critics and 92% from audiences.
2:00:04
There we go. Yep.
2:00:05
So on IMDb it has a big 8.1 out of 10.
2:00:09
Huge. So general opinion on the thing
2:00:11
has changed massively in the years since its release.
2:00:14
And on this we have another question from Patreon.
2:00:17
So Jamie Russell and John Rappache have both asked.
2:00:22
Why was the film so poorly received at the time?
2:00:25
Well, I think it's 1982. Ronald Reagan's just been
2:00:29
elected president, and I think America was just going through a
2:00:32
really particularly patriotic phase in their history.
2:00:36
And I just don't think they wanted something as dark and as
2:00:39
bleak and as downbeat as The thing is in this film.
2:00:42
Americans are complete fuck UPS. The hero doesn't win at the end
2:00:46
and it's not the team and up with Russell and Carpenter, that
2:00:49
audience has got the previous earn escape from New York.
2:00:51
So it's not what they're expecting.
2:00:53
And I think in terms of critics, I think they just weren't ready
2:00:57
for it. I think they took the special
2:00:58
effects at fears value and were just so like shocked and
2:01:02
horrified by them and what Carpenter was showing them that
2:01:05
they just weren't capable of looking beyond that and being
2:01:08
able to appreciate everything that's going on beneath the
2:01:10
surface in this film. Being able to appreciate the
2:01:13
writing, being able to appreciate what Carpenters do
2:01:15
and what Cundy is doing, the music of Morricone.
2:01:18
And ultimately it is VMC two, that this film was buried at the
2:01:22
box office by ET. And I think that's just the type
2:01:25
of film and experience that audiences and critics wanted at
2:01:29
the time. They wanted a happy time.
2:01:31
They didn't want this. I mean, if you watch this on
2:01:35
face value, all you get is this ridiculous go fest that makes
2:01:39
absolutely no sense. And if you go to the cinema for
2:01:42
in 1982 and you've on a bang, bang, you've just seen AT and
2:01:46
you're going into your thing. Oh Jesus, you know, that's going
2:01:49
to really, it's really going to flip you out.
2:01:52
But I mean, I just, yeah, like Matt said, I think it was it's
2:01:55
miles ahead of its time. And I think if this was to come
2:01:57
out now in any cinema after lockdown to the thing on the big
2:02:01
screen, people are flocked to it because it's just it's got that
2:02:05
appeal now. It needs that.
2:02:07
It needed that real attention to detail that I think is so lost
2:02:12
because the effects are so good and the effects are so out of
2:02:14
this world and so fucking ridiculous that that that's all
2:02:18
people fix it on. But if you give it a chance, and
2:02:20
if you can really study it and look at the mastery behind it
2:02:24
and the filming and behind it, and like Matt said, the score or
2:02:27
the acting and the paranoia and the claustrophobic, the
2:02:30
claustrophobic element, it is all day.
2:02:33
And if you watch that at home by yourself with the curtains
2:02:38
drawn, it's an incredible film. But if you watch it in 1982 with
2:02:42
your family, it ain't going to hit home.
2:02:44
So to soap this section, then basically everybody hated the
2:02:48
thing when they came out and now everyone loves it.
2:02:51
Thank you very much. Sequels and influence.
2:03:00
The Thing made no money on its release, so a sequel wasn't
2:03:03
immediately forthcoming, but when the film stature grew, so
2:03:06
did studio interest in making a follow up.
2:03:08
And that's what happened 3 decades later.
2:03:11
The Thing was released in 2011. Directed by Matisse van
2:03:15
Heiningen Junior and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joe
2:03:18
Edgerton, it tells the story of what happened at the Norwegian
2:03:21
camp before the 1982 movie starts.
2:03:24
Like its predecessor, it was also poorly received and on
2:03:27
Rotten Tomatoes has 34% from critics and 42% from audiences.
2:03:33
A sequel, a prequel, a remake, and a reboot all in one.
2:03:37
Is the 2011 The Thing? Have you fellow seen it?
2:03:40
I have, yeah. I quite enjoyed it.
2:03:43
I thought it was really good. I thought it was.
2:03:46
It had all of them elements that you wanted to be answered.
2:03:48
I mean, there's some really questionable bits in it, like
2:03:51
The Thing isn't as good as it was, that some of the effects
2:03:54
aren't aren't practical, which I would love to have seen a lot
2:03:58
of. It's CGI in there and it's quite
2:04:00
jarring. But I think all of the character
2:04:02
relationships work really well and it's lovely seeing that
2:04:05
block of ice and realising how it's come out of that.
2:04:08
And it's lovely seeing all of these other bits that kind of
2:04:11
tie in to the original. It's nowhere near as good as The
2:04:15
Thing, but it's a very, very, very, very good reinterpretation
2:04:21
of the story. And I think as a prequel, as it
2:04:24
goes, if you love The Thing, it's well worth checking out
2:04:27
because I think it's just really, it's really nice little
2:04:30
homage to the yeah. So tonight the thing 2011 and a
2:04:34
kebab for me. I was outside.
2:04:37
And then The Thing 1982. Well, back to John Carlton.
2:04:43
That's the thing. And as we've said, It's Thatcher
2:04:45
grew enormously in the years after its release, not just with
2:04:48
critics and audiences, but with other film makers as well.
2:04:51
And Guillermo del Toro, Neil Blomkamp, GJ Abrams and Quentin
2:04:54
Tarantino have all cited The Thing as an influence on their
2:04:57
work. So how do we think the Thing was
2:05:00
influential? Where can we see it since 1982,
2:05:03
Matt? Well, I think the the really
2:05:05
obvious one is, is Rob Bortin's career.
2:05:07
Obviously, you know, arguably the only person who came out
2:05:11
with this for any real credit at the time, and his creators shot
2:05:14
off from here and all those film makers you mentioned.
2:05:17
Yeah, you can definitely see the look of this film and some of
2:05:20
Guillermo del Toro's films, the kind of fantastical creatures
2:05:24
that he creates and how he does his practical effect as well.
2:05:28
So very, very much on him. And then I've just thought of
2:05:32
some very specific ones. I'm sure you'll know this one,
2:05:34
John, but there's an early X-Files episode that pretty much
2:05:38
directly rips off the thing. I think it's set.
2:05:40
Is it set in Canada I think? Alaska.
2:05:42
Alaska, yeah. And it's a scientific base and
2:05:45
there's like a parasitic worm that's taken them off and turned
2:05:48
them violets. That was like a massive homage
2:05:50
to The Thing. And then of course, I'm sure
2:05:52
we're going to mention this, but The Hateful is which is
2:05:54
basically Tarantino remake and The Thing as a Western.
2:05:57
Yeah, definitely. But also, I know that there's a
2:06:00
tradition in British Andori research stations where they
2:06:02
watch The thing is part of their midwinter feast which is held
2:06:05
every June the 21st, which is pretty.
2:06:07
Brilliant. Nice.
2:06:10
That's pretty grim. I'm.
2:06:13
Watching Apocalypse Now in Joy Head.
2:06:19
Yeah, I mean, they hatefully, it's the obvious one, isn't it?
2:06:21
I mean, Kurt Russell in there, you know, the the snow,
2:06:24
everything, it just kind of works, the paranoia.
2:06:26
But I think any film that is, you know, a close contact, multi
2:06:33
characterized version of paranoia is the thing since it
2:06:38
came out in 82, whether people like it or not, you know it it
2:06:41
it set the blueprint because it is so well done without it being
2:06:45
over the top, without it being hard to watch, without it being
2:06:47
oh fucking hell, this is difficult.
2:06:49
Like for all the themes that it goes through, for everything, I
2:06:53
think it's really, really brilliantly done and I think it
2:06:55
has been looked at and has been, it has influenced a lot of
2:07:00
people. And for whatever feelings that
2:07:02
John Carpenter felt at the time when it came out in the cinema,
2:07:06
it's totally, totally redeemed itself since then and become an
2:07:10
absolute classic. Yeah, so the legacy of The thing
2:07:15
is beyond question. I think it's still pervades
2:07:17
popular culture, has been cited by big film making names as a
2:07:20
major influence. And why not head to the
2:07:23
Antarctic next June the 21st to watch you with a team of British
2:07:26
scientists, if that's your bag? Why not?
2:07:29
They get infected and bite the heads off.
2:07:34
All right, when you do the ranking.
2:07:38
This is the part of the show where we pull it all together
2:07:40
and give you our summaries and scores out with 10 for the movie
2:07:43
to see where we'll sit in the All the Right Movies
2:07:45
leaderboard. So Westie, do you want to start
2:07:48
us off your summary and score for the Thing please?
2:07:52
Of course, right. OK, I'm getting quite a bit of
2:07:56
stick from friends of mine who are like, how do you do you
2:08:01
whole like summary and score and how and what's that based on?
2:08:04
Like the thing isn't like the Godfather.
2:08:07
All right, you can't give that A10, You can't give that a 10.
2:08:10
But what I do is I do it on my own personal merit.
2:08:13
I don't do it on anyone else's opinion or anyone else's thing.
2:08:17
It's like it's how it's impacted me, how it's impacted what I've
2:08:21
seen or how it's driven me or how influential it is towards
2:08:25
what I believe. Cinema is important in that
2:08:29
whole demographic. And I think the thing for me
2:08:32
sits perfectly in that whole shift of when I started to watch
2:08:39
films and then really got them on my level.
2:08:42
I was like, this works, this is great, I'm not going to get
2:08:45
tired of it. I don't give a fuck what anyone
2:08:48
else thinks about it and from for that reason alone.
2:08:52
It's so influential and I'll always come back to it because
2:08:54
it doesn't really seem like it's themes have a limit.
2:08:58
And like I've said before, when we've had lockdown, we've had
2:09:01
quarantine, we've had all of these problems, we've all been
2:09:04
claustrophobic, we've all been locked in.
2:09:05
We don't know what the fuck's going on.
2:09:07
This film has made perfect sense.
2:09:08
Like it came out in 1982 and it still makes perfect sense now.
2:09:12
I think all of the performances are absolutely brilliant, from
2:09:16
12 different people to all have their own personalities and
2:09:19
their interactions are incredible.
2:09:21
I think the direction from Carpenter has never been better.
2:09:23
I think Kundi absolutely shines without necessarily shining.
2:09:28
I think 14 at 22 years old fucking nails this and he
2:09:33
should. He should have got an Oscar for
2:09:34
this and everyone should know who he is because of this film.
2:09:37
I think it's just such an incredibly enjoyable film and
2:09:41
for me, I'll go and see it on the big screen tomorrow morning
2:09:44
at like four or five in the morning.
2:09:46
I'll get up that early to go and see it.
2:09:48
I don't care. It's absolutely fucking
2:09:51
brilliant. It's absolutely fucking cinema
2:09:54
and it's so entertaining and it's so much fun and I watch it
2:09:57
every time. And even when Matt turns 30,
2:10:00
I'll buy it from him on Blu-ray, so it's a 10 for me.
2:10:05
Oh, the perfect 10. Well, as I've said throughout
2:10:08
this episode, there's a lot of talent that people work on the
2:10:11
thing, and that shows. John Carlton, that was a driving
2:10:13
force of course, and it feels like a carton of film in the
2:10:16
best ways possible. His mastery of tension and
2:10:19
horror is constantly on display here, and that's always a great
2:10:22
site when he's at his best. The cast are excellent,
2:10:25
particularly Kurt Russell in the lead, of course.
2:10:27
One of his best performances for me.
2:10:29
The music from Ennio Morricone is fantastic, not one of his
2:10:33
very best maybe, but it doesn't have to be to still be superb
2:10:36
and integral to the film. And of course the practical
2:10:39
effects work masterminded by Rob Bortin is extraordinary.
2:10:42
Stuff still looks great to this day.
2:10:45
Some of the plot holes and lack of characterization in the
2:10:47
writing are a shame for me, but that representation of paranoia
2:10:51
brought on by a lack of trust is one of the best examples I've
2:10:53
ever seen in film. So it's not a perfect film for
2:10:57
me, but it's one of the great science fiction horror films,
2:11:00
without doubt, and it's my favorite John Carpenter film.
2:11:03
So in all, I'm going for 9 out of 10 for The Thing.
2:11:08
And Matt, your summary and score for The Thing, please.
2:11:11
Disgusting. Leave it at that.
2:11:16
You were above this, Matt. You were above this.
2:11:24
This film is just so important to me.
2:11:27
I genuinely wouldn't be the person that I am if it wasn't
2:11:30
for this film. Really good.
2:11:32
Yeah. When just open mind.
2:11:33
John, he fucking loves this. You know I.
2:11:36
Yeah, oddly, his open mind, far too young mind at the time as to
2:11:41
what was possible in his film. That has never let me down
2:11:44
since. I find it endlessly rewarding
2:11:47
and it reminds me when me, Luke and Wesley did The Shining and
2:11:51
Wesley was talking about that and how there's always something
2:11:53
to get out of that film and you just want to keep going back to
2:11:56
it again and again. Now, this isn't as deep as The
2:11:59
Shiner, and of course not, of course it's not.
2:12:01
It doesn't have those levels to it, but it's got that paranoia,
2:12:05
It's got those unanswered questions.
2:12:07
It's got that ambiguity over events, over characters.
2:12:10
And that's what keeps me coming back again and again and again
2:12:13
because I love a film that has the confidence to not give me
2:12:16
the answers, to let me make my own mind up about it.
2:12:20
Like, I don't mean this is a bad joke, but from it's very first
2:12:22
few in this film has been under my skin and it will never leave.
2:12:26
The performances, the effects, the music, the writing are some
2:12:30
of the very best there's ever been in this genre.
2:12:32
And some of those aspects still aren't appreciated for how good
2:12:35
they really are, which is a shame.
2:12:36
And then bringing it all together, it's John Carpenter at
2:12:41
the absolute peak of his talent. He wouldn't be as good as this
2:12:44
again, which is another tragedy. So just to say a film is the
2:12:48
greatest film ever made that warranted discussion episode all
2:12:51
on its own. And there's literally hundreds
2:12:53
if not thousands of films that could be included in that
2:12:55
discussion. But what I can say is this film
2:12:59
is pretty much my favorite film of all time.
2:13:02
So it is of course a 7.5. All right, Pi.
2:13:11
Stealing this No, it's the easiest turn out ever given my
2:13:14
life. Yeah, I knew that was coming.
2:13:17
Easy. Feel bad for your night now, do
2:13:19
you, John? Feel bad for your night now?
2:13:22
Fucking asshole. You love sci-fi.
2:13:24
You love horror. That's where I put my last.
2:13:29
I knew what was coming. As they always do, we also asked
2:13:33
our Twitter followers to vote some of their comments.
2:13:36
Adam Yates at at ad under score Yates, patron and friend of the
2:13:39
show said. Might not be in my top ten, but
2:13:43
it's undeniably A10. The tension and sense of dread
2:13:46
built in the 1st 40 minutes is absolutely killer.
2:13:49
Great performances and special effects as well.
2:13:51
Yeah, I think we agree with that.
2:13:56
Leon doggy dog Leon doggy dog said.
2:13:58
Imagine being so paranoid that you'll cut your own mates to
2:14:02
check if they bleed alien. Now imagine that same scenario,
2:14:05
but you're really, really cold chilling.
2:14:12
Yeah, locked down with the heating off.
2:14:18
And the grumpy get and grumpy get.
2:14:20
Here we go. 5. Well, lives up to his name.
2:14:25
Overrated. Sure, the effects for ground
2:14:28
breaking, but having a door assault on Precinct 13,
2:14:30
Halloween, The Fog and escape from New York, the thing seemed
2:14:34
very uncarbonate alike lacking in his trademark tension and the
2:14:37
scares. What?
2:14:40
What? I say no, what's the thing from
2:14:41
another world? Is that what he's?
2:14:43
Watched yeah, I think he's he's miles of should should change
2:14:45
his name to optimistic fella and then talk about different films.
2:14:50
Yeah, I think grumpy get is right.
2:14:52
Lacking intention, the thing I mean.
2:14:54
What? What?
2:14:55
Yeah. It's by disgusting.
2:14:58
Disgusting. And all together, our Twitter
2:15:00
followers ranked the film as What do you think?
2:15:02
Oh. God well.
2:15:05
If you unexpected law comments there so nine say like. 8.
2:15:10
It was 9.5 out of. 10095 Lovely. OK, good, excellent.
2:15:15
Great. Good.
2:15:16
Yep. So that gives the thing 38.5 or
2:15:20
40 in total. You can check our website to see
2:15:22
where it sits in the leaderboard and that's a wrap on the thing.
2:15:27
It is I. Think we're all very tired?
2:15:29
Yeah. We haven't asked any of you
2:15:32
anymore. Come back in two weeks time for
2:15:36
Matt Looking Pi bringing you the full making of story behind
2:15:40
Martin Breasts Midnight Run. Yes, please.
2:15:42
Please do. Good foot forward to that, Matt.
2:15:44
Yeah, should be great. To find out more about becoming
2:15:47
a Patron, accessing our archive bonus episode, and supporting us
2:15:50
on what we do, please visit patreon.com/all the Right
2:15:53
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2:15:58
And socially, you can keep up with all the right movies on
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2:16:05
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2:16:08
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2:16:10
And our website is all the right movies.com.
2:16:14
So we're all off now to blood test the all the right Movies
2:16:17
gang and see who's who. So thanks for listening
2:16:21
everybody and please come by again in a couple of weeks time.
2:16:24
Yeah, please do, guys. You can say bye Westy.